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Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#51

Post by jamessantiago »

For this I usually think that complexity in general is dangerous when our ability to apply our own value systems degrades past a certain point. For the 2008 financial issues we had a few financial products like subprime loans where the reasoning and economics behind these were complicated enough that most couldn't effectively regulate or understand the implications of their use.

I suppose when enough things go wrong with a complex system it's like having runtime errors popup that you can debug against and get a better understanding of what you created, but that first execution is just dangerous enough that you wouldn't want something that's complex enough to be doing anything important. Then again, we might not think something is complex enough until we start running into the "unknown unknowns" of real world usage.

Maybe a somewhat subjective qualifier for what's "complex" could be developed and then the ethical question is "is due diligence being taken to reduce the risks inherent in this complex system?"

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#52

Post by bitL »

We humans have a multitude of competing ethics in the form of religions; we can't even agree on which one is the right one; programming ethics into AI is going back to that chicken-and-egg problem, requiring selecting which philosophical system is the right one. We can view competing religions as optimization algorithms where the best one for given state of world is winning, pressuring other ones to evolve or die off. Would we need competing, multi-GAN style AI "religions" all times at each other's throat as well?

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#53

Post by ex_clarifai »

tolstoy77 wrote: post #31

Wow, was just looking through the glassdoor reviews at the company in the article,Clarifai. https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Clarifai-R... Seems like an awful place to work. They have a role I was about to apply to in the bay area. Looks like I'll avoid this place.

Wow this one is good https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Clarifai-R...

Fun fact, they hired an ex trump org assistant to be his new assistant https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharon-benita-23703449

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#55

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

lemagedurage wrote: post #47
grecy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The question should be "Is a (universal) Ethical person even possible?". And of course, it entirely depends on whose culture and historical norms you're looking at and who is doing the judging. So really, no.

Yet murder is a punishable offense and people seem just fine with that. The law is an accepted and used set of actions that are considered bad, with associated repercussions. It's a best effort and it _works_. Why would AI have to reinvent the wheel here?

Murder is the taking of a life in a manner/context which is considered bad by definition.

If you consider there are many situations where the taking of a life is considered politically or economically expedient, ethically justified, or a social or cultural necessity, the ethics of life-taking become a lot less straightforward.

One of the greatest potential benefits of AI is that having to define our ethics explicitly, instead of wrapping them up in layers of propaganda, manipulation, and self-serving lies, has the potential to transform society.

It's currently a very remote potential, but it does exist.

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#56

Post by devoply »

bitL wrote: post #52

We humans have a multitude of competing ethics in the form of religions; we can't even agree on which one is the right one; programming ethics into AI is going back to that chicken-and-egg problem, requiring selecting which philosophical system is the right one. We can view competing religions as optimization algorithms where the best one for given state of world is winning, pressuring other ones to evolve or die off…

There is nothing inherently ethical about any religion. They have some ethical concepts in them that might be universal like don't kill but they are easily overridden by don't kill fellow believers. Similarly there is nothing ethical about any society other than within the small confined system of a certain ideology which validates its own ethics. At the end ethics is just a game we play and we can teach computers to play similar games with a certain set of rules. That does not in any way mean that a computer will be ethical, only that it can be taught to observe the norms of the ethical games played by the society it serves using a rule based system that is applied to certain final actions that it has computed it should carry out.

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#57

Post by wool_gather »

bellerose wrote: post #37
6cd6beb wrote: post #26

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…

> If ethics could be codified I think we'd have one ruleset everyone agrees on. People want to deeply believe this as true. I find it false because I see free will as an illusion. Majority of people think free will exists. Agreement on ethics cannot exist with this conflict because it inherently effects morality.

Well, if no one has free will it doesn't really matter what you think, does it? Any agreement or disagreement must also be an illusion, because no one involved can do otherwise. In fact, "I find it false" is meaningless, since you have no alternative.

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#58

Post by stcredzero »

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…

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.

tl;dr: Ethical AI is hard. Ethical NI is harder!

Doesn't "Coherent Extrapolated Volition" actually boil down to, "Hey AI, don't do like us. Do as we should do!" (If we were better, more noble beings.)

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Coherent_Extrapolated_Voliti...

And if we can't have "Coherent Extrapolated Volition" aren't the only outcomes the subsumption of Homo sapiens into a different kind of intelligence and/or its extinction?

Come to think of it, "Coherent Extrapolated Volition" just sounds like the same sort of wishful thinking which religions hook into.

Voltaire in the 18th century: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Tech in 2019: "We need to be the first to implement the god-like AIs, because the the first mover advantage will yield tremendous profits!"

Re: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

#60

Post by bellerose »

wool_gather wrote: post #57
bellerose wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If ethics could be codified I think we'd have one ruleset everyone agrees on. People want to deeply believe this as true. I find it false because I see free will as an illusion. Majority of people think free will exists. Agreement on ethics cannot exist with this conflict because it inherently effects morality.

Well, if no one has free will it doesn't really matter what you think, does it? Any agreement or disagreement must also be an illusion, because no one involved can do otherwise. In fact, " I find it false" is meaningless, since you have no alternative.

No. What I see people describing as ethical is not correct when people have no choice. It's also not meaningless to live with knowing free will is an illusion. Hard to really reply to such a dismissive assertion.
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