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Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?
When a news article revealed that Clarifai was working with the Pentagon and some employees questioned the ethics of building artificial intelligence that analyzed video captured by drones, the company said the project would save the lives of civilians and soldiers.
"Clarifai's mission is to accelerate the progress of humanity with continually improving A.I.," read a blog post from Matt Zeiler, the company's founder and chief executive, and a prominent A.I. researcher. Later, in a news media interview, Mr. Zeiler announced a new management position that would ensure all company projects were ethically sound.
As activists, researchers, and journalists voice concerns over the rise of artificial intelligence, warning against biased, deceptive and malicious applications, the companies building this technology are responding. From tech giants like Google and Microsoft to scrappy A.I. start-ups, many are creating corporate principles meant to ensure their systems are designed and deployed in an ethical way. Some set up ethics officers or review boards to oversee these principles.
But tensions continue to rise as some question whether these promises will ultimately be kept. Companies can change course. Idealism can bow to financial pressure. Some activists — and even some companies — are beginning to argue that the only way to ensure ethical practices is through government regulation.
"We don't want to see a commercial race to the bottom," Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, said at the New Work Summit in Half Moon Bay, Calif., hosted last week by The New York Times. "Law is needed."
Possible != Probable. And the "needed law" could come in the form of a ban and/or surveillance of coding and hardware-building activities.
Related:
U.N. Starts Discussion on Lethal Autonomous Robots
UK Opposes "Killer Robot" Ban
Robot Weapons: What's the Harm?
The UK Government Urged to Establish an Artificial Intelligence Ethics Board
Google Employees on Pentagon AI Algorithms: "Google Should Not be in the Business of War"
South Korea's KAIST University Boycotted Over Alleged "Killer Robot" Partnership
About a Dozen Google Employees Have Resigned Over Project Maven
Google Drafting Ethics Policy for its Involvement in Military Projects
Google Will Not Continue Project Maven After Contract Expires in 2019
Uproar at Google after News of Censored China Search App Breaks
"Senior Google Scientist" Resigns over Chinese Search Engine Censorship Project
Google Suppresses Internal Memo About China Censorship; Eric Schmidt Predicts Internet Split
Leaked Transcript Contradicts Google's Denials About Censored Chinese Search Engine
Senators Demand Answers About Google+ Breach; Project Dragonfly Undermines Google's Neutrality
Google's Secret China Project "Effectively Ended" After Internal Confrontation
Microsoft Misrepresented HoloLens 2 Field of View, Faces Backlash for Military Contract
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday March 05 2019, @07:37AM (6 children)
This too shall pass, when it turns out the current 'AI' is just another correlation machine, too prone to adversial attacks and too expensive to make it robust (by the sheer scale of 'neurons' required).
It will fizzle about the same time with driverless cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:00AM (3 children)
it's not about how intelligent it is, the outcry is about how powerful tools are to be used by bad agents (governments, corporations, mafia, whatever).
and the current "AI" tools are indeed objectively powerful.
independently of the well intended outcry is the reality that any law regulating the development of algorithms is unenforceable.
what you can enforce is that voting is done in person with paper balots, and people can organize meetings where no electronics are allowed (although I think that ship is sailing fast as well).
meta: I find it interesting that when I list bad agents, I immediately think of government and corporations, then mafia comes as an afterthought. A psychotherapist could probably make a lot of money talking to me about this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:42AM
...government and corporations _are_ the mafia.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday March 05 2019, @11:30AM
Not that hard to beat. E.g. face recognition [youtube.com] (y'all like it)
Paradoxically, the danger is not in the effectiveness of the "AI" (*), but in the credence in its effectiveness the government/corporations will be willing to lend to it.
Too cryptic? Remember the polygraph? As BS as it is, is it still used [wikipedia.org] by law enforcement and judicial entities, and in some cases employers.
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(*) one can "poison" them almost easy today [google.com], will be trivial when the open source will take it as a great way to do something with the spare time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 06 2019, @12:12AM
government and corporations, then mafia
Are not as distinct as they appear on TV. They are primary motivators, like red, blue, and green are primary colors. Combine the three and get the whole picture.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:25AM (1 child)
How many body bags will be needed before that?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 05 2019, @11:00AM
As many as it takes, your only concern should be not to be killed by a self-driving car.
Until the people with money realize that the "Church of AI" has many prophets but no deity. Not without a disruptive advance in computing - QC is far for that. Yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford