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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

#31

Post by Levitz »

i_dont_know_ wrote: post #2

I keep seeing "AI ethics" being redefined to focus on fictional problems instead of real-world ones, so I wrote a little post on it.

It's interesting how I think our experience differs completely, for example, regarding people's concerns for AI ethics you write:

>People are far more concerned with the real-world implications of ethics: governance structures, accountability, how their data is used, jobs being lost, etc. In other words, they’re not so worried about whether their models will swear or philosophically handle the trolley problem so much as, you know, reality. What happens with the humans running the models? Their influx of power and resources? How will they hurt or harm society?

This is just not my experience at all. People do worry about how models act because they infer that eventually they will be used as source of truth and because they already get used as source of action. People worry about racial makeup in certain historical contexts[1], people worry when Grok starts spouting Nazi stuff (hopefuly I don't need a citation for that one) because they take it as a sign of bias in a system with real world impact, that if ChatGPT happens to doubt the holocaust tomorrow, when little Jimmy asks it for help in an essay he will find a whole lot of white supremacist propaganda. I don't think any of this is fictional.

I find the same issue with the privacy section. Yes concerns about privacy are primarily about sharing that data, precisely because controlling how that data is shared is a first, necessary step towards being able to control what is done with the data. In a world in which my data is taken and shared freely I don't have any control on what is done with that data because I have no control on who has it in the first place.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/08/we-defini...

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

#32

Post by salawat »

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…

>Training LLMs is closer, conceptually, to raising children than to implementing regexp parsers, and the whole "small simple set of universal constraints" is just not really applicable/useful.

That this can be said, and there still being so doubt we should ramp up the Ethics research before going and rawdogging the implementation just bloody bewilders me.

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

#33

Post by DSingularity »

scotty79 wrote: post #22
myrmidon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not sure we will ever get good at teaching them to distinguish reality from imagination. Feels like there are too many generative models pushing everything from fake songs to fake video clips.

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

#34

Post by dale_glass »

bayindirh wrote: post #30
dale_glass wrote: post #28

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. 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…

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

Those are not styles, they're characters for the most part.

You absolutely can draw heavy inspiration from existing properties, mostly so long you avoid touching the actual characters. Like D&D has a lot of Tolkien in it, and I believe the estate is quite litigious. You can't put Elrond in a D&D game, but you absolutely can have "Elf" as a species that looks nigh identical to Tolkien's descriptions.

For style imitation, it's long been a thing to make more anime-ish animation in the west, and anime itself came from Disney.

> Yep, after calling and getting permission and possibly paying some fees to you if you want.

Not for art styles, they won't. Style is not copyrightable.

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

#35

Post by jordanb »

danaris wrote: post #23
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.

It's kinda hilarious that people are explicitly trying to build a future based on (mostly dystopian) scifi, which was the point of the torment nexus thing. But then when scifi argues for constraints on technology the argument is "those are just stories."

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

#36

Post by Sharlin »

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…

The burden of proof is obviously on anyone who wants to argue that the three laws are, in fact, a good solid framework for robot ethics. It's pretty astonishing that the three laws are taken by anyone as being some sort of canonical default framework.

Asimov was not in the "try to come with a good framework for robot ethics" business. He was in the business of trying to come up with some simple, intuitive idea that didn't require the readers to have a degree in ethics and that was broken and vague enough to have a plenty of counterexamples to make stories about.

In short, Asimov absolutely did not propose his framework as an actually workable one, any more than, say, Atwood proposed the Gilead as a workable framework for society. They were nothing but story premises that the consequences of which the respective authors wanted to explore.

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

#37

Post by krapp »

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…

The most obvious evidence that Asimov's three laws are not a good framework is the fact that they are not a framework, they are a plot device. Isaac Asimov was a professor of biochemistry, he had no clue about how robots or AI might actually work. The robots in his stories have "positronic brains" because positrons at the time were newly discovered and sounded cool.

They aren't simply "good for story writing," their entire narrative purpose is to be flawed, and to fail in entertaining ways. The specific context in which the three laws are employed in stories is relevant, because they are a statement by the author about the hubris of applying overly simplistic solutions to moral and ethical problems.

And the assumptions that the three laws are based on aren't even relevant to modern AI. They seem to work in universe because the model of AI at the time was purely rational, logical and strict, like Data from Star Trek. They fail because robots find logical loopholes which may violate the spirit of the laws but still technically apply. It's essentially a math problem, rather than a moral or ethical problem, whereby the robots find a novel set of variables letting them balance the equation in ways that lead to amoral or immoral consequences.

But modern LLMs aren't purely rational, logical and strict. They're weird in ways no one back in Asimov's day would ever have expected. LLMs (appear to) lie, prevaricate, fabricate, express emotion and numerous other behaviors that would have been considered impossible for any hypothetical AI at the time. So even if the three laws were a valid framework for the kinds of AI in Asimov's stories, they wouldn't work for modern LLMs because the priors don't apply.

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

#38

Post by District5524 »

nathias wrote: post #11

I don't know why people allow others to proclaim they're 'ethicists' if they have no relevant philosophical education. There are whole fields of 'ethics' that are just PR departments trying to escape the now bad connotations of 'PR departments'.

That reminds me of the new draft standard of CEN/CENELEC (EU std body) on "Competence requirements for professional AI ethicists" https://standards.cencenelec.eu/dyn/www/f?p=205:22:0::::FSP_...

But by the time they'll adopt it, singularity will already have happened... For some reason, my instincts suggests there will be no MA in Philosophy needed.

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

#39

Post by qualeed »

Sharlin wrote: post #36
qualeed wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The burden of proof is obviously on anyone who wants to argue that the three laws are, in fact, a good solid framework for robot ethics. It's pretty astonishing that the three laws are taken by anyone as being some sort of canonical default framework. Asimov was not in the "try to come with a good framework for robot ethics" business. He was in the business of trying to come up with some simple, intuitive idea that d…

>The burden of proof is [...]

Sometimes we can just talk about things without having to pretend we're in a court of law or defending our phd thesis.

Original commenter wasn't asking for anyone to prove anything, or trying to prove anything themselves. They just observed that some conversations are hand-waved away.

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

#40

Post by krapp »

jordanb wrote: post #35
danaris wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's kinda hilarious that people are explicitly trying to build a future based on (mostly dystopian) scifi, which was the point of the torment nexus thing. But then when scifi argues for constraints on technology the argument is "those are just stories."

The argument isn't "those are just stories" it's that "those stories demonstrate why those constraints won't work."

But people are going to try it anyway. Belief in Asimov's three laws is a matter of religious faith. Just know you've been warned.

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