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Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#21

Post by chobeat »

amelius wrote: post #20
calabin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kicking myself that I never thought to use GitHub to put together a reading list. Great idea.

Yeah, great idea. The thing that's missing, though, is that you can't easily leave a comment on each of the listed items. That makes it a sort of one-way piece of information. Perhaps a wiki would be better (?)

True but you have the issues and the PR. The format for sure is not intended for casual discussion but at the same time there's plenty of space to discuss improvements and bring criticism.

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#26

Post by 6cd6beb »

Ethics is subjective. If ethics could be codified I think we'd have one ruleset everyone agrees on.

The article mentions trying to have a human enforce ethics, but then that person has to be an example of ethical excellence; something you can't test for. And in the end, they say every man has his price, so no. I don't think "ethical AI" is possible. I think "ruthlessly efficient AI" is the goal. Maybe it should only be used in situations where ethics don't matter

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#27

Post by corysama »

There is a work of fiction (the name of which I unfortunately do not recall) that tells tales of war machines, hard-coded with the rules and conventions of war, coming into conflict with their own angry and frustrated operators.

I love the concept of AI that could be not just super-intelligent, but also/instead super-moral. I hope we can find the inspiration to bring some of that concept into reality.

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#29

Post by wallace_f »

adjkant wrote: post #2

Ethical AI is hard, but so are ethical laws, ethical taxation, and ethical advertising, to name a few more ubiquitous things than AI. The real answer here is that ethics is hard, and even if you know ethics and can get some agreement, getting humans to be ethical is even harder. AI only introduces a new danger, but at the current complexity of AI I don't think its any more significant in effect than the other ethical…

>Every day I think we get closer and closer to needing to implement technocrats in governments.

If one is interested in seeing an opposing point of view to this, one could lookup Philip Hamburger and the term, administrative state.

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#30

Post by wallace_f »

dogma1138 wrote: post #11
coldtea wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A, the old "it's how you use the tool" chestnut. Only some tools are inherently abusable -- something that has been expressed in lots of forms, from "the medium is the message" critique of TV/internet/etc, to the gun control debate ("guns don't kill people, people kill people" etc).

I think you are missing the point, the argument is AI ethical isn’t the same as can AI be ethical. AI is a tool, and while you can say some tools are easier to abuse than others it has not baring on their ethics since tools have no ethics to begin with. And the leverage or force multiplication you get from a tool is directly tied to how easily it can be abused but also to how useful it is to you in general. Is a gun…

How do you not see the contradiction in writing about how no tools are inherently unethical, then say that one tool is inherently unethical because you are scared of it in particular?
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