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Patent Granted for Ethical AI
BandwidthHog writes "Marriage counselor and ethics author codifies human virtues and vices, then patents it as Ethical AI. Seems vague, but he's got high hopes: 'This could be a big money-making operation for someone who wants to develop it,' and 'The patent shows someone who has knowledge of the A.I. field how to make the invention.'" I can't wait for the kinder, gentler vending machine.
Good thing ethics are so incredibly well defined that we can make an AI mimic such fine behavior. Sounds to me like the inventor is confusing the word patronizing with ethical. Also, the article doesn't say a whole heck of a lot.
This seems to be misnamed if I understand the article correctly. It is more emotional AI, not ethical AI. If it was ethical, it would be deciding what is right and wrong, not trying to interpret human feelings. I really don't want Hal 2020 sitting in the jury stand when I go before the court and I don't think that is the intention here.
Scott, Keeper of the Crystal Flame
I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, and specialized in ethics. Now I teach ethical theory for a living. This doesn't make me any moral paragon---remember, those who can do, those wo can't teach. But it probably means that if someone describes their views about ethics I ought to be able to understand them; I should know the lingo, the way a lot of /.ers do computer lingo. But I poked around on this guy's web site, and his way of talking about ethics is absolutely bizarre. I read what he said about justice, and it really just seemed to be gibberish. It made me think of what a really precocious 8th grader might come up with---some elaborate classificatory scheme that is more precise than the material allows and misses everything important. He can pretty safely be written off as a hack, even without taking the AI stuff into account. But because he seems crazy enough to sue over being called a hack, I think I'll post this one anon.
How long before someone *patents* 'genuine people personalities'? The trend to award patents for methods, algorithms, gene sequences and similar things which could be argued as natural phenomena is alarming. My suscinct read on this is that this fellow has garnered a patent on nothing but labeled to maximise attention to it. (1) His assertion that he has codified or defined ethics with an alogrithmic implementation is laughable. (2) I'll bet he doesn't *have* an implementation. Just some fscking diagrams (as required for patents). (3) If he can [really] codify and implement something as ephemeral as 'ethics' in AI software, he should already be raking mega-bucks and the admiration of the masses with the product of his Nobel-prize winning genius... solving the problems of hunger and war and disease with his stunningly crafty AI's. But no, he's just another fame-grubbing opportunist trying to capitalise on a patenting some aspect of a concept whose basis has been in dispute since philosophers first began debating anything. He doesn't intend to create new, ground-breaking AI systems. He intends to (a) stake his claim to fame (b) get someone to fund some pretense of research and/or (c) extort funds from future AI developers whose actual works might infringe his wonderful patent. Jeeze. This patent stuff is getting absurd.