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Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

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Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#41

Post by glsdfgkjsklfj »

A.I. is going to be a new wave to legal dark ages.

since the 90s everything that involved a computer was not prosecuted because lawefforcement/regulation didn't have the skills, not for lack of laws. But new laws were created spelling out computers.

A.I. is the same, it is not nothing different from enforcing existing laws and regulations, but because the agencies lack the skills, we will see a new wave of stupid laws that only misses the point instead of proper training and funding of what we already have.

There is zero need for new laws if a company doesn't hire or sell to a minority group, or their products explode, or whatever. No matter how much they scream it was the bad-brain-in-the-computer fault. Sadly, lots of companies will get away with this silly defense for a while.

Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#42

Post by gedy »

slg wrote: post #36
Guest42 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What types of models and what types of bias are you referring to?

Any model created using biased data will inherently mirror that bias unless there are active steps made to counteract this effect. For example, basically any financial evaluations of US citizens will likely result in an inherent bias against Black people due to institutional biases such as redlining that have long lasting socioeconomic and demographic repercussions. This might mean that something as simple as incorpo…

"Any model created using biased data" from what I've seen from Ghebru, et al means: real day-to-day language that people actually use and vast majority have no issue with. Phrases like "woman doctor" "both genders", etc.

To remove this discourse from models ironically means applying a strong bias imho.

Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#43

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

anigbrowl wrote: post #15
djoldman wrote: post #8

>Alex Hanna, the Google ethicist who criticized the Neurips speech-to-face paper, told me, over the phone, that she had four objections to the project. First, ...Second, ....Third, ....Finally, the system could be used for surveillance. I'm curious about this. As I understand it, an ethicist is objecting to the publication of software that could be used for surveillance. If that is correct, does it follow that this e…

The unstated implication here is that ethicists either don't comment comment on such things (and are therefore hypocrites) or that their critique is so broad as to subsume all utility (and is therefore excessive). Rather than throw up hypotheticals which this ethicist is probably not around to refute, I think it's be better to look at the person's body of work in this area and if you think they have some sort of inte…

Well, none of the publication titles on this page contain the word "surveillance". I was able to find an interview (https://medium.com/ethics-models/interview-with-dr-alex-hann...) where she says we're "embedded in a system of racial surveillance capitalism", but doesn't really discuss it or mention any specific times when bad AI caused people to be wrongly surveilled. If you know of any specific explanation that she's provided, I'd be interested to read it.

But the most likely explanation IMO is that Hanna isn't using the term "surveillance" as a pointer to any concrete idea about what will go wrong. It seems to be just an all-purpose explanation for why AI models need to respect her sensibilities.

Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#44

Post by AnHonestComment »

slg wrote: post #36
Guest42 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What types of models and what types of bias are you referring to?

Any model created using biased data will inherently mirror that bias unless there are active steps made to counteract this effect. For example, basically any financial evaluations of US citizens will likely result in an inherent bias against Black people due to institutional biases such as redlining that have long lasting socioeconomic and demographic repercussions. This might mean that something as simple as incorpo…

Your post sounds really racist.

You don’t like the data, so you accuse the model of being biased (even though it’s accurate) and insist that you get to apply your own personal biases based on how you think races should look and interact?

Racial correlation isn’t racial bias.

In what way is viewing the world through a lens of racism useful?

Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#45

Post by djoldman »

anigbrowl wrote: post #30
djoldman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to imply anything other than what I wrote. I actually mean to ask the exact question: How does one distinguish between software that can be used for surveillance and software that cannot? To be more specific, if an ethicist objects to the publication of software that can be used for surveillance, they are assuming that the software can be used for surveillance. How did they arrive at that conclusion?

If you're so curious, I suggest you do what I did and read more of their public statements and writings to satisfy your curiosity.

Thanks for your suggestion.

Of the 16 linked papers/book-chapters a few were not freely accessible.

Of the ones that were accessible, 3 contain the string "surveil" in the body and 1 contains it in the bibliography. None of the references were helpful unfortunately.

Do you have any other links that may answer the question?

Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#46

Post by slg »

Guest42 wrote: post #39
slg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any model created using biased data will inherently mirror that bias unless there are active steps made to counteract this effect. For example, basically any financial evaluations of US citizens will likely result in an inherent bias against Black people due to institutional biases such as redlining that have long lasting socioeconomic and demographic repercussions. This might mean that something as simple as incorpo…

I agree that the data will shift the results of the model and that some predictors can be proxies for others that are protected, but the claim was that the models themselves were biased (rather globally) and was curious whether that was shown and if so how.

I'm not OP, but I don't think the claim was specifically that models themselves are biased. It is that models are inherently biased because the data they are based on is biased. That might sound the same, but there is a nuanced difference. If you are able to strip the bias from the data, the models will work fine. The problem is the data and not the models.

Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#47

Post by timkam »

optimalsolver wrote: post #17
iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #3

> At artificial-intelligence conferences, researchers are increasingly alarmed by what they see. This is because there is an increasing proportion of people that is not going to the conferences for the science and instead to try to hijack the conferences with their own agenda. It's of course their right to make a fuss, but it would be nice to still have venues that are focused on the science and not the other politic…

Funny how no one minded when the highly politically-motivated billionaire Peter Thiel was (and still is) pouring enormous amounts of money into AI. I'm more concerned about billionaires with an agenda than no-name researchers giving a talk on cyber-intersectionality.

I think this topic is more about what should be the focus of discussion in the AI community. A key question is: to what extent do AI researchers need to consider ethics and how do they need to consider it? These are hard questions. People in the broader AI community are typically no ethics experts, so the discussions can easily become uninformed and unpleasant, and some people on the extremes of both sides will try to use it to strengthen their profile (or perhaps, some of them simply can't hold their horses). Funding sources are a different topic, and many funding providers fund both AI intersectionality and research towards more effective autonomous weapons systems...

Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#48

Post by klyrs »

Guest42 wrote: post #39
slg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any model created using biased data will inherently mirror that bias unless there are active steps made to counteract this effect. For example, basically any financial evaluations of US citizens will likely result in an inherent bias against Black people due to institutional biases such as redlining that have long lasting socioeconomic and demographic repercussions. This might mean that something as simple as incorpo…

I agree that the data will shift the results of the model and that some predictors can be proxies for others that are protected, but the claim was that the models themselves were biased (rather globally) and was curious whether that was shown and if so how.

Do you think it's reasonable to expect a model, trained on biased data, to not display a similar degree of bias?

Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#49

Post by yesenadam »

djoldman wrote: post #32
whatshisface wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without making any kind of statement of whether I agree with this ethical framework, I think it's pretty straightforward to assign more or less blame depending on the specialization of the technology for the purpose of doing something evil. In an ethical framework where manufacturers could be culpable for the uses of their products, iron refiners would have specks of micro-sins on the 0.001% level, whereas torture ra…

In US society/laws, it seems that the vast majority of blame is ascribed to the entity who last causes an event to occur. So the blame in the following sequence: 1. Miner mines iron 2. Manufacturer makes knife 3. Retailer sells knife to person A 4. Person A kills person B with the knife I think most people living in the US would be ok with the general idea that person A should be held responsible for killing person B…

> Would you consider the knife retailer equivalent to the torture rack manufacture in your example?

Not GP, but doesn't

>> I think it's pretty straightforward to assign more or less blame depending on the specialization of the technology for the purpose of doing something evil

answer your question?

Re: Who Should Stop Unethical A.I.?

#50

Post by eeZah7Ux »

iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #3

> At artificial-intelligence conferences, researchers are increasingly alarmed by what they see. This is because there is an increasing proportion of people that is not going to the conferences for the science and instead to try to hijack the conferences with their own agenda. It's of course their right to make a fuss, but it would be nice to still have venues that are focused on the science and not the other politic…

You are trying to re-frame ethics as "agenda" and "political stuff."

Enough said.

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