Just like NNs did to symbolic AI which is sorely missed to build explainable and ethical systems.
By this I mean there are plenty of scalable, even gigantic, practical uses of NNs popping all around leveraging available data and cheap compute. But not for handdrawn expert systems of old
I don't think symbolic AI has much to do with ethics? My impression is that ethics in this space are primarily concerned with the application of these technologies, especially when their deficiencies and biases are known.
There are several possible reasons for this latter: not only that you should not be contented until you "could warranty" for "your" system, but also the possible outcomes. For example, yesterday I submitted a
“Are you kidding, carjacking?” – The problem with facial recognition in policing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37138229
where reporting is made of law reliability systems that have false positives of bewildering error and heavy consequences.
Suppose one AI that deterministically determines an output and is stress tested for reliability, and suppose one that hallucinates an output, maybe through statistical reconstruction of detail. The ethics there would not be orthogonal at all.
> my guess is because they're more capable
That '«capable»' you used there is a hive. You could have guesses many more reasons, such as "we can hence we do".