Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly why ethics doesnt work, and it is why laws work. If ethics worked, we'd have no need for laws.
Slavery ended with gunfire not hugs.
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OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
491–499 of 499 posts
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#492I'm a broken record on this, but I'd like to reiterate: 1. Academic ethics is the theoretical study of what you can get away with. (Law is the applied branch). Professors in ethics are not experts at being good, or knowing what is good, they're experts in how to get away with things. If you want an expert in being good, you need a saint, not an academic studying ethics. Saints are in short supply. 2. That said, ethic…
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Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
They make sure that they are executing contracts in a way that doesn't break the ethics of the jurisdictions they are operating in, they aren't a bunch of naive people pleading for less war.
> they aren't a bunch of naive people pleading for less war Where is this coming from? Who claimed this?
Sorry that was meant for who you replied to, I was pointing out the difference in the application of ethics and a personal vs corporate level and that they aren't there to argue a contradictory moral opinion at the company they are there to make sure that the company can execute contracts in a way that abides by the legal ethics of where the are operating - raytheon and stopping war was just an example it applies to all companies and I think most people, myself included, have an incorrect assumption of what those departments are even there for in the first place.
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I've never found the "maximizing shareholder profit" imperative to be compelling as something that should be done, but as a predictor of how companies will act, it's not something I ever feel safe betting against.
One subtlety that is worth considering is that what a company is inherently set up to do is maximize shareholder value . Value can be quite complex, especially while the number of shareholders is small. Value can include the legacy or reputation of the shareholders. It can include the ethics of the shareholders. It can include completely different goals, like the famous "make humans a multi-planetary species". Treati…
I guess that's a logically coherent way of viewing it, but to me, that stretches the definition of "value" to be almost tautological; it's essentially saying "companies are founded to do the things that the people who found them want them to do".
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
People confuse morals with ethics. It can be perfectly acceptable, ethically, to do something that is morally reprehensible.
How are you distinguishing them? I had the impression they were essentially synonyms, and this was borne out by two university courses in philosophy which I took. That said, googling "morals vs ethics" turns up quite an interesting mess. A variety of contrasting perspectives showed up: - Ethics come from an external source, whereas morals come from within - Ethics are rational and structured, whereas morals are more…
Yeah it's interesting how in some contexts they're interchangeable yet, culturally we very often use the words differently.
Personally I tend to feel like your second bullet - ethics are based on rules whereas morals are based on emotions.
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#496Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last. If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group…
It is good PR to have what is largely ceremonial role that oversees an entire system, whose powers are in practice useless or completely defanged.
I’m thinking of the role of the King or Queen of England, for example, or any country’s president. They have the power to disband parliament if it is deemed unfit for government, or reject a law that has been approved by the senate/Lords, yet in practice they are not expected to disagree with the ‘will of the people’ so to speak.
Same applies to the head of an ethics department on a business which is obviously unethical (or they wouldn’t need one).
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
Food companies aren't rapidly developing groundbreaking new technologies on the most competitive battleground in computing history where everyone is trying to compete globally just to create the foundational infrastructure. It's not that hard to get some pickled eggs on a grocery store shelf while remaining compliant with expected ethical standards for the industry. Food is a pretty mature industry.
> rapidly developing if the speed comes at the cost of not making reasonable ethical considerations, is that not something that should be looked at?
Of course it is. Doesn't mean the stakeholders are willing.
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#498Organisationally it never works to have a group whose only job is to say no to some other group. The incentives are diametrically opposed and as a structure it can’t last. If you had an AI company and want it to be ethical you have to find a way to make ethics everyone’s responsibility, and have the consequences of poor ethics bite the people who make those bad decisions. If you just outsource it to the ethics group…
I don't get why in the comments this gets compared with regulations and security teams...
Say no to regulations and security --> Fine, forced correction, fewer customers, shutdown.
Say no to ethics --> money (at least for AI companies)
Why is this so hard to understand?
Re: OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
#499In five years, I'd love to read a book about the history of AI ethics. I suspect it will read like Voltaire. My sense is that it is radically shifting from a fluffy marketing arm to a department expected to contribute meaningfully to development and justify its impact. I would expect an ethics team to build frameworks that can help train/eval the model that the company spend millions of dollars and months training is…
Nah... it'll never work if the cost of being ethical is profit.