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AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

nimishg.substack.com

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Re: AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

#21

Post by bayindirh »

dale_glass wrote: post #5
bayindirh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great little post. Congrats. Also there's the ethics of scraping the whole internet and claiming that it's all fair use, because the other scenario is a little too inconvenient for all the companies involved. P.S.: I expect a small thread telling me that it's indeed fair use, because models "learn and understand just like humans", and "models are hugely transformative" (even though some licenses say "no derivatives w…

Worrying about that stuff is just a waste of time. Not because of what you said, but because it's all ultimately pointless. Unless you believe this will kill AI, all it does is to create a bunch of data brokers. Once fees are paid, data is exchanged, and models are trained, if the AI takes your job of programming/drawing/music, then it still does. We arrived at the same destination, only with more lawyers in the mix.…

The thing is, if you can make sure that some of that your images/music/code aren't used for AI training, then you can be sure that you can continue doing what you do, because your personal style enables the specialty you can create.

Maybe you will lose some of your "territory" in the process, but what makes you, you will be preserved. Nobody will be able to ask "draw me a comic with these dialogue in the style of $ARTIST$".

Re: AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

#22

Post by scotty79 »

myrmidon wrote: post #18
Isamu wrote: post #8

This has been happening for a long time. I first noticed this with the hand waving dismissals of older concepts like Asimov’s laws. Not a carefully reasoned argument why “not causing harm to a human” is outmoded, but just pushing it aside. I would love to see a good reasoned argument there. No, instead there is Avoiding talking about harm to humans. Just because harm is broad doesn’t get you out of having to talk abo…

I think a big factor in Asimov's laws specifically being sidelined is that the whole process of building AI looks very different from what we pictured back then. Instead of us programming the AIs by feeding it lots of explicit hand-crafted rules/instructions, we're feeding the things with plain data instead, and the resulting behavior is much more black-box, less predictable and less controllable than anticipated. Tr…

It might make a comeback when we finally get good at teachning AI what's real and what's imagined and also logical reasoining. I think it does moral evaluation of actions mostly well already (bacause humans are not great at it anyways). Then a rule like "don't harm humans" might suffice.

Re: AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

#23

Post by danaris »

Isamu wrote: post #8

This has been happening for a long time. I first noticed this with the hand waving dismissals of older concepts like Asimov’s laws. Not a carefully reasoned argument why “not causing harm to a human” is outmoded, but just pushing it aside. I would love to see a good reasoned argument there. No, instead there is Avoiding talking about harm to humans. Just because harm is broad doesn’t get you out of having to talk abo…

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics were explicitly designed to be a good basis for fiction that shows how Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics break down.

Suggesting they be used as a basis for actual AI ethics is...well, it's not quite to the level of creating the Torment Nexus from acclaimed sci-fi novel "Don't Create the Torment Nexus", but it's pretty darn close.

Re: AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

#24

Post by bo1024 »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #6

It seems to me that this article is the one prevaricating between "ethics" and "safety". The latter is of course a narrow subset of the former, as there are many ethics issues that are not safety issues.

You might not be aware of the context (actually the author of the article might not either). There has in fact been a big push by major AI companies to focus on quote safety unquote while marginalizing (not citing, giving attention to, etc) people focusing on what those companies call quote ethics unquote.

For example, from Timnit Gebru:

> The fact that they call themselves "AI Safety" and call us "AI Ethics" is very interesting to me.

> What makes them "safety" and what makes us "ethics"?

> I have never taken an ethics course in my life. I am an electrical engineer and a computer scientist however. But the moment I started talking about racism, sexism, colonialism and other things that are threats to the safety of my communities, I became labeled "ethicist." I have never applied that label to myself.

> "Ethics" has a "dilemma" feel to it for me. Do you choose this or that? Well it all depends.

> Safety however is more definitive. This thing is safe or not. And the people using frameworks directly descended from eugenics decided to call themselves "AI Safety" and us "AI Ethics" when actually what I've been warning about ARE the actual safety issues, not your imaginary "superintelligent" machines.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/timnit-gebru-7b3b407_the-fact...

Re: AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

#25

Post by bayindirh »

JackFr wrote: post #19
bayindirh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great little post. Congrats. Also there's the ethics of scraping the whole internet and claiming that it's all fair use, because the other scenario is a little too inconvenient for all the companies involved. P.S.: I expect a small thread telling me that it's indeed fair use, because models "learn and understand just like humans", and "models are hugely transformative" (even though some licenses say "no derivatives w…

IP is a pragmatic legal fiction, created to reward developers of creative and innovative thought, so we get more of it. It’s not a natural law. As such fair use is whatever the courts say it is.

Then let's abolish all of them. Patents, copyrights, anything. Let's mail Getty, Elsevier, car manufacturers, chemical plants, software development giants and small startups that everything they have has no protection whatsoever...

Let us hear what they think...

I'm for the small fish here, people who put things out because of pure enjoyment, waiting nothing but a little respect for the legal documents they attach to their wares they made meticulously, which enables most of the infra which enables you to read this very comment, for example.

Current model rips the small fish and feeds the bigger one forcefully, creates an inequality. There are two ways to stop this. Bigger fish will respect smaller fish, because everybody is equal in front of law (which will not happen) or abolishing all protections and make bigger fish vulnerable to small fish (again, which will not happen).

Incidentally, I'm also here for the bigger fish, too, which put their wares in source-available, "look but not use" type of licenses. They are also hosed equally badly.

I see the first one as a more viable alternative, but alas...

P.S.: Your comment gets two points. One for deflection (it's not natural law argument), and another one for "but it's fair use!" clause. If we argue that only natural laws are laws, we'll have some serious fun.

Re: AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

#26

Post by Isamu »

qualeed wrote: post #17
JackFr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not hand waving, Asimov’s three laws are not a good framework. My claim is that the whole point was so that Asimov could write entertaining stories about the ambiguities and edge cases of the three laws.

This is a pretty good example of what parent comment was referencing, I think. You say " Asimov’s three laws are not a good framework. ", then don't present any arguments to why it is not a good framework. Instead you bring up something separate: the framework can facilitate story writing. It could be good for story writing and a good framework. Those two aren't mutually exclusive things. (I'm not arguing that it is…

Right, in particular Asimov is not presenting a detailed framework of any kind.

His laws are constraints, they don’t talk about how to proceed. It’s assumed that robots will work toward goals given them, but what are the constraints?

People now who want to talk about alignment seem to want to avoid talk of constraints.

Because people themselves are not aligned. To push alignment is avoiding the issue that alignment is vague and the only close alignment we can be assured of is alignment with the goals of the company.

Re: AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

#28

Post by dale_glass »

bayindirh wrote: post #21
dale_glass wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worrying about that stuff is just a waste of time. Not because of what you said, but because it's all ultimately pointless. Unless you believe this will kill AI, all it does is to create a bunch of data brokers. Once fees are paid, data is exchanged, and models are trained, if the AI takes your job of programming/drawing/music, then it still does. We arrived at the same destination, only with more lawyers in the mix.…

The thing is, if you can make sure that some of that your images/music/code aren't used for AI training, then you can be sure that you can continue doing what you do, because your personal style enables the specialty you can create. Maybe you will lose some of your "territory" in the process, but what makes you, you will be preserved. Nobody will be able to ask "draw me a comic with these dialogue in the style of $AR…

> The thing is, if you can make sure that some of that your images/music/code aren't used for AI training, then you can be sure that you can continue doing what you do, because your personal style enables the specialty you can create.

Personal styles are dime a dozen and of far lesser importance than you think.

Professionals will draw in any style, that's how we make things like games and animated movies. Even assuming you had some unique and incredibly valuable style, all it'd take to copy it completely legally is finding somebody else willing to copy your style to provide training material, and train on that.

Re: AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

#29

Post by i_dont_know_ »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #6

It seems to me that this article is the one prevaricating between "ethics" and "safety". The latter is of course a narrow subset of the former, as there are many ethics issues that are not safety issues.

True... I was trying to define them the way (I think) companies are defining them (like what their alignment teams are looking at) and the way it's reported. I think in these specific contexts they're used with overlap but yeah I do bounce back and forth a bit here.

Re: AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

#30

Post by bayindirh »

dale_glass wrote: post #28
bayindirh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if you can make sure that some of that your images/music/code aren't used for AI training, then you can be sure that you can continue doing what you do, because your personal style enables the specialty you can create. Maybe you will lose some of your "territory" in the process, but what makes you, you will be preserved. Nobody will be able to ask "draw me a comic with these dialogue in the style of $AR…

> The thing is, if you can make sure that some of that your images/music/code aren't used for AI training, then you can be sure that you can continue doing what you do, because your personal style enables the specialty you can create. Personal styles are dime a dozen and of far lesser importance than you think. Professionals will draw in any style, that's how we make things like games and animated movies. Even assumi…

> Personal styles are dime a dozen and of far lesser importance than you think.

Try imitating Mickey Mouse, Dilbert, Star Wars, Hello Kitty, XKCD, you name it.

Randall will possibly laugh at you, but a legal company which happens to draw cartoons won't be amused and come after you in any way they can.

> Professionals will draw in any style...

Yep, after calling and getting permission and possibly paying some fees to you if you want. There's respect and dignity in this process.

Yet, we reduce everything into money. Treating machine code like humans and humans like coin-operated vending machines.

There's something wrong here.

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