Editor's Note: The 10th Nishan Forum on World Civilizations will be held in Qufu, Shandong province, the hometown of Confucius, from July 10 to 11, aiming to promote traditional Chinese culture and strengthen international cultural exchanges and cooperation. China Daily is inviting experts and scholars in related fields to share their insights into Confucianism, traditional Chinese culture and the dialogue among various civilizations.

Benjamin Coles, lecturer at the School of Philosophy and Social Development in Huaqiao University, Xiamen. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Q: In what ways can Confucian values contribute to modern civilisation and cultural continuity?

A: As the mainstream of traditional Chinese culture, Confucianism and its values form an inescapable part of China's cultural heritage, and play a key role in defining what it means to be "Chinese". Although these values were integrated with ancient China's imperial power structures, and thus have been widely criticised as merely serving the interests of its ruling classes, it is now generally recognised both that the original Confucianism of Confucius, Mencius, etc. originally possessed an independent and robust ethical value position from which to judge and rectify the empirical realities of social life, and that Confucians throughout history frequently maintained this stance, sometimes even paying the highest price for doing so. The liberation of such an ethical stance from its traditional social constraints is widely acknowledged as a central aspect of modern civilisation, and thus Confucianism should play a central role in any notion of "Chinese modernity", one which can contribute to the further development and strengthening of global ethical norms in opposition to power politics and unrestricted economic self-interest.

Q: What is your favourite famous saying from The Analects and how do you understand it?

A: Ever since I began reading Confucian works, I have always been impressed by Confucius' statement: "If they are guided with coercive regulations and kept in line through punishments, the common people will seek to evade these and have no sense of shame. If, however, they are guided with virtue, and kept in line through propriety, they will have a sense of shame and rectify themselves" (The Analects 2.3). This is one of Confucius' most perceptive and profound statements on the origins of ethical and political order, and reveals that he was acutely aware of the way in which the Chinese politics of his time had lost the "Way", or dao, descending into mere management of people through coercive administrative measures, with no ethical core of humanity, or ren. In the modern world where techniques of management and administration have been developed to an extreme that Confucius could never have imagined, and people are all too often seen as mere "human resources" to be manipulated and exploited, it is crucial to return to ethical perspectives like those of Confucius on the values that underpin human civilisation and social life.

Q: How do you view the role that high-end technology plays in cultural heritage?

A: That technology plays an indispensable role in preserving and recovering cultural heritage can be clearly seen in the use of 3D modelling and imaging techniques to extract and read previously unknown and inaccessible context from excavated texts from ancient Chinese sites such as Dunhuang, Guodian, and Mawangdui. These have given us a much wider and more detailed picture of ancient Chinese thought and life, one that was unavailable to earlier generations and that can now be shared with people around the world without damaging the original texts.

Q: How do you perceive the impact of artificial intelligence on traditional Confucian values and ethics?

A: The recent rapid developments in artificial intelligence give rise to clear challenges to most traditional ethical viewpoints, potentially producing a form of intelligence that, while its cognitive abilities go far beyond those of any human, lack any ethical intuitions or instincts. While such an intelligence may perhaps be able to possess a form of purely rational ethics like that of Kant, or possibly a "cosmic" ethics of nature like that of Daoism, Confucian ethics in particular insists on the essentially human origins of its values or dao, since "expressing inherent nature is what is called the dao" (Zhongyong). In this regard, as artificial intelligence becomes a greater part of our lives, it will inevitably challenge the limits of our humanity, such that eventually, as Nietzsche predicted, it will be up to us to decide how firmly we insist on our humanity against its potential overcoming. However, regardless of our view on such issues, it is essential that these deliberations are held in public and internationally, such that our common ethical principles can be brought into play without becoming mere tools for partisan interests.

Q: In what ways can Confucian principles guide the ethical development and deployment of AI technologies?

A: One key issue that has emerged along with the development of artificial intelligence is its apparent difficulty in being truthful and aware of the limits of its knowledge, frequently inventing or synthesising false "facts" when it is unable to directly find an answer to a particular question. As Confucius famously noted, a central aspect of wisdom is "to recognize that one knows what one knows, and that one does not know what one does not know" (The Analects 2.17), and here it seems that artificial intelligence could learn much from Confucius. If artificial intelligence developers are unable to solve this problem, it will inevitably have a negative impact on society, similar to that which can already be seen with the issue of "deepfakes", where our information environment becomes saturated with false and misleading content, and people are left unable to make meaningful judgments about the world beyond their immediate experience. In this and many other areas, Confucian ethics can guide Chinese society by promoting human principles with which people can regulate new technologies.