Practical Judgment, Virtue, and Intuition in the Use of Opaque AI-Enabled Systems

2026-07-14

AI Summary

This study addresses the core challenge of ensuring that opaque and potentially autonomous AI systems deployed in high-stakes domains—such as military applications—adhere to ethical, legal, and societal norms while preserving meaningful human control. The work proposes a governance framework centered not on technical metrics alone, but on distinctly human qualities such as practical judgment, moral virtue, and intuition, which resist quantification. By integrating philosophical and ethical analysis with concrete high-risk use cases, the project bridges the gap between technical implementation and normative standards. It thereby establishes a theoretical foundation and guiding principles for the responsible deployment of opaque AI systems, underscoring the indispensable role of human judgment in safeguarding both the ethical integrity and operational efficacy of artificial intelligence.

Abstract

AI-enabled systems are seeing increasing deployment across numerous domains, with many being "black boxes" with respect to core functions and capabilities. I.e., many systems take inputs and give outputs, but without users having any ability to see how the former lead to the latter. AI-enabled systems are also being used to augment autonomy in systems, and autonomy coupled with opacity raises numerous concerns surrounding, e.g., the reliability of systems, their regularity in functioning, human ability to control them, or whether deploying opaque and potentially autonomous systems is in compliance with ethical and legal norms. In this article, we argue that many of these worries can be mitigated by leveraging practical judgment, virtue, and intuition in the deployment and use of opaque AI-enabled systems. We show that focusing on these distinctly human capabilities provides a means for bridging between the practical challenges created by opacity and the ethical, legal, and social norms underpinning particular domains. We argue that a core element in doing this is a recognition that many positive human traits are not quantifiable and we therefore must develop training regimen and guidelines on AI deployment anchored in humanistic but non-quantifiable values. Throughout the article, we focus on the military domain as an exemplar of the importance of practical judgment, virtue, and intuition as drivers for ethical and effective human decision-making surrounding AI deployments, but the underlying arguments apply to all domains where opaque and potentially autonomous systems are being deployed (subject to domain-specific alterations).

Problem

• opaque AI systems
• autonomy
• ethical norms
• human control
• black-box AI

Innovation

• practical judgment
• virtue
• intuition
• opaque AI systems
• human-centered AI