AI will never be ethical or safe
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AI will never be ethical or safe
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Re: AI will never be ethical or safe
#2These kind of write-ups all have an implicit premise that is unstated: they're talking about corporate AI run by corporations. They're not actually talking about the technology. Corporate AI will never be ethical or safe because corporate persons have different motivations and profit incentives driving them than human persons do. And most of the time they're quite nasty when viewed through the lens of human ethics.
It reminds me of the parable of the blind monks each feeling a different part of the elephant and arguing about it's shape. They're each not wrong, but they're also only talking about a limited subset of the elephant (AI).
Cory Doctorow is much more eloquent in his explaination of this important distinction in his reverse centaur metaphor.
Re: AI will never be ethical or safe
#3The article immediately starts off with such a glaring contradiction that it makes it very hard to correctly interpret the remainder of it.
You can't say that something can never be ethical/safe on the one hand, and then on the other hand say that being ethical/safe depends on context/intent. Those two statements contradict each other.
Either AI can be safe and ethical in the right context with the appropriate intent which contradicts the title, or it can't be safe/ethical regardless of intent/context, in which case the title is correct but the reasoning is incorrect.
There is no consistent way to interpret the remainder of the article with such a glaring and obvious inconsistency.
Re: AI will never be ethical or safe
#4> The reason is this:
> Both ethical and safe conduct depend on context and intent.
The same apples to knives, and they can be plenty useful, and used in a safe manner.
Re: AI will never be ethical or safe
#5Would AI be safer or more ethical if it required malicious users to lie about their intent first?
"Most people don’t provide their context. They never have—not to search engines, not to librarians, not to hardware store clerks."
Exactly. Are hardware store clerks unethical as well?
Re: AI will never be ethical or safe
#6Can an encyclopaedia be ethical or safe?
Can a search engine be ethical or safe?
Can an AI be ethical or safe?
If you answer differently for one or more of these questions, then you'll have to say why and where you draw the line.
Re: AI will never be ethical or safe
#7> Both ethical and safe conduct depend on context and intent.
That entire line of reasoning is absurd. You can get information from books, they don't know context and intent either. Books will never be ethical or safe.
Re: AI will never be ethical or safe
#8The article immediately starts off with such a glaring contradiction that it makes it very hard to correctly interpret the remainder of it. You can't say that something can never be ethical/safe on the one hand, and then on the other hand say that being ethical/safe depends on context/intent. Those two statements contradict each other. Either AI can be safe and ethical in the right context with the appropriate intent…
Yeah I hate the title because it almost verges on clickbaity because one assumes that he's making the assertion that AI has a moral stance in the first place, versus AI being morally neutral and driven by its wielder
Re: AI will never be ethical or safe
#9AI is just a way to search information, program and control computers faster with natural language understanding etc.
I’m not sure why people are attributing to so much to it. It just allows a single person to do a lot more units of work, the same way that a computer allowed a single person to do a lot more units of work.
Re: AI will never be ethical or safe
#10Can an encyclopaedia be ethical or safe? Can a search engine be ethical or safe? Can an AI be ethical or safe? If you answer differently for one or more of these questions, then you'll have to say why and where you draw the line.
One is a cybernetic system. It has sensors, a controller, a decision system, goals, and actuators. Arguably it's alive, but I think the definition of cybernetics is sufficient because it's objective.