Morality first?

The Morality First strategy for developing AI systems that can represent and respond to human values aims to first develop systems that can represent and respond to moral values. I argue that Morality First and other X-First views are unmotivated. Moreover, if one particular philosophical view about value is true, these strategies are positively distorting. The natural alternative according to which no domain of value comes “first” introduces a new set of challenges and highlights an important but otherwise obscured problem for e-AI developers.