Team Aims To Create Pure Evil AI

puroresu writes "Scientific American reports on the efforts of Selmer Bringsjord and his team at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who have been attempting to develop an AI possessed of an interesting character trait: pure evil. From the article, 'He and his research team began developing their computer representation of evil by posing a series of questions beginning with the basics: name, age, sex, etc., and progressing to inquiries about this fictional person's beliefs and motivations. This exercise resulted in "E," a computer character first created in 2005 to meet the criteria of Bringsjord's working definition of evil. Whereas the original E was simply a program designed to respond to questions in a manner consistent with Bringsjord's definition, the researchers have since given E a physical identity: It's a relatively young, white man with short black hair and dark stubble on his face.'"

Comments

The Scary Door from "The Spanish Fry"

[eldavojohn]

Narrator: You're on a scenic route through a state recreational area known as the human mind. You ask a passerby for directions, only to find he has no face ... or something. Suddenly up ahead there's a door in the road. You swerve, narrowly avoiding ... The Scary Door!

Scientist: *a mad scientist is seen mixing chemicals* I have combined the DNA of the world's most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all. *a pod opens flowing with clouds of steam*

Naked Man: *steps out of pod* Turns out it's man!

Re:The Scary Door from "The Spanish Fry"

[FroMan]

The Honking

Re:The Scary Door from "The Spanish Fry"

[SBrach]

Announcer: Imagine if you will, an announcer you can barely understand, he refers to a [mutters], but you're not quite sure what he said. He seems to be eating something, or perhaps he's a little drunk. It's remotely possible that he just said something about the Scary Door.

Private: It's all over! Our guns and bombs are useless against the aliens.

Farmer: The saucers! They's a-crashin'!

Announcer: In the end, it was not guns or bombs that defeated the aliens, but that humblest of all God's creatures, the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Re:The Scary Door from "The Spanish Fry"

[InlawBiker]

Her problem was running GLaDOS for an OS. She shoulda stuck with Linux.

At what point...

[feldhaus]

... did they decide that evil is male? There are some girls I want them to meet.

Re:At what point...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that they(ironically detracting from their goal) went down the path of maximising for "threatening" or "untrustworthy", rather than evil(which is much harder to depict, without falling into specific cliche-riddled stuff).

A fair few studies suggest that a face that looks about like that one, with more or less unpleasantly masculine features, rates low on perceived trustworthiness and high on perceived threat. Of course, the evil that you don't recognize is way more dangerous than the obvious one, so choosing that is kind of silly; but I'm not too surprised that they did.

Re:At what point...

[XxtraLarGe]

If you think about it, white male is the only possibility for them to avoid accusations of racism or sexism.

Re:At what point...

[Wireless Joe]

To paraphrase Frodo Baggins:


"I think evil would look fairer and feel fouler."

True evil would try to look as trustworthy and pleasant as possible; or, to also paraphrase Baudelaire,

"The greatest trick the Devil could ever pull would be convincing the world he didn't exist."

Re:At what point...

[Monkeedude1212]

But that's racist! And Sexist!

Re:At what point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it wonderful to be in the world today, where everyone can be racist against whites without fear of reprisal?

Re:At what point...

[fataugie]

How nice of you to notice.

Re:At what point...

[Cryogenic Specter]

They probably modeled it after the jock that beat them up in high school.

Re:At what point...

[couchslug]

They needed a character that wouldn't be perceived as racist or genderist, so only a white male would be the Politically Correct safe choice.

Re:At what point...

[digitig]

I know it's bad internet manners to use all caps, but I think this is an important point for all you children to hear:

There's NO SUCH THING as RACISM AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE.

Bullshit.

Though I digress, my point is that you can start complaining about racism against white people once people of color invade your homeland, enslave you, kill most everyone you know, then a couple of good-hearted ones finally manage to convince the others to leave you alone, but now you're left in crushing poverty in a place where most people hate you and your people.

My wife is non-white. She hasn't been enslaved, her friends and family have not been killed, she has not been left in crushing poverty in a place where most people hate her and her people. But she has been refused promotion on the grounds that the employer would never allow a non-white into a management position, and she has had a manager complain about having her on his team because he only wanted white men (she took that one to law on grounds of racial and sexual discrimination, and won). That's not what you describe, but it's still racism, and when it happens to white people (it does) then it's still racism. Your argument is a simple logical fallacy. You are arguing:

• Premise 1: Invading your homeland, enslaving you, killing most everyone you know, being left in crushing poverty in a place where most people hate you and your people is racism.
• Premise 2: What has happened to white people is not Invading their homeland, enslaving them, killing most everyone they know, being left in crushing poverty in a place where most people hate them and their people.
• Conclusion: What has happened to white people is not racism.

Lets try another argument of exactly the same form:

• Premise 1: Socrates was a man
• Premise 2: Plato was not Socrates
• Conclusion: Plato was not a man.

See why your argument doesn't hold up? It's called "denying the antecedant" -- look it up.

Re:At what point...

[shutdown -p now]

There's NO SUCH THING as RACISM AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE.

Of course there is. When you say that white people are somehow inferior because they are white, as Nation of Islam and your beloved Malcolm X did, then it's racism. When you say that white people have to be killed wholesale, it's racism. When you drive out white property owners under the threat of lynching out of "African ancestral lands", as it happened in Zimbabwe and SAR, it's racism. When a bunch of black gangsters beat up a guy just because he's white, that's racism.

And, last but not the least, when you claim that it is impossible to be racist against white people no matter what you say or do, it's racist.

Re:At what point...

[twostix]

Minority white farmers in Zimbabwe care as they're driven off their land and out of the country by the powerful ultra racist black majority...

When are the people who constantly condemn the evil racist white man going to start condemning the racist apartheid black mans state of Zimbabwe?

That would be never.

Re:I foresee

[MyLongNickName]

I foresee you using "preview" next time.

How do you define evil?

[Monkeedude1212]

Well Bringsjord's definition quotes

To be truly evil, someone must have sought to do harm by planning to commit some morally wrong action with no prompting from others (whether this person successfully executes his or her plan is beside the point). The evil person must have tried to carry out this plan with the hope of "causing considerable harm to others," Bringsjord says. Finally, "and most importantly," he adds, if this evil person were willing to analyze his or her reasons for wanting to commit this morally wrong action, these reasons would either prove to be incoherent, or they would reveal that the evil person knew he or she was doing something wrong and regarded the harm caused as a good thing.

So I guess all they have to be is a religious nutjob who thinks killing heathens/infadels/etc etc is alright.

Re:How do you define evil?

[Monkeedude1212]

Not necessarily though, I mean don't get me wrong, I think Child molestation is a bad thing, but sometimes the people are so messed up inside that they KNOW its wrong and they can't stop doing it, like how some people can't stop smoking cigarettes.

Having known someone who was into that kind of thing, he told me that he really hated who he was and that it felt a little bit like a bipolar thing that he couldn't help. Was what he doing wrong? Absolutely, and he knew it.

Did he feel he was doing more good then causing harm? No. He turned himself in.

I posted because when I read it I thought "How does one create pure evil when evil is a frame of reference?" So I went to RTFA and just thought that Bringsjord's definition of evil was not exactly what -I- would picture pure evil. I imagined pure evil as that maniac who wants to control the world for his own benefit, at the cost of anyone elses lives or pleasures. My closing comment was that Bingsford's definition of pure evil exists QUITE COMMONLY in the world today.

Re:How do you define evil?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Not necessarily: religious nutjobs' reasons are bullshit; but they are often quite coherent bullshit. Moreover, religious nutjobs generally subscribe to some flavor of a divine command theory of ethics and believe that they are carrying out divine instructions, which logically implies that they do not believe that they are carrying out a morally wrong action.(Arguably, divine command theories of ethics are incoherent, Plato having more or less shoved a stake in their heart ages ago; but they are quite common and quite commonly believed, even on inspection, to be coherent).

If anything, the most dangerous nutjobs are characterized by their extreme degree of value-rational conduct. In the case of pretty much any religious nutjob of note, you'll find, either around them or in the society that spawned them, numerous people who embrace the same epistemological and metaphysical convictions who, nevertheless, are only modestly dangerous, at most, because they do not follow their convictions through to their rational conclusion.

Re:How do you define evil?

[RingDev]

Not necessarily. You're getting into the regions of moral relativism. What one person sees as evil, another sees as good.

What ever action you take, or choose not to take, has social ramifications. Depending on the scale of your (in)action, multiple societies will cast their opinion on it. And each will see your act differently.

In a "good" person, we see someone who cares more for the good of the society, and society's opinion of them, then they do for their own desires.

In a typical person, we see a balance of personal desires against societal needs and social expectations.

In an "evil" person, we see someone who cares more for their own personal desires than societal needs and social expectations.

For a pure evil person, we would need someone who not only cares more for their own personal desires, but finds achieving their personal desires at the expense of society to be fulfilling. For the most part, see Heath Ledger's rendition of the Joker.

So I would argue that it requires less personal energy and resources to be evil than it does to be good. The trade off though, is that most western societies have ways of dealing with evil people.

-Rick

Re:How do you define evil?

[frosty_tsm]

I imagined pure evil as that maniac who wants to control the world for his own benefit, at the cost of anyone elses lives or pleasures.

I thought this too. Then I wondered how you could analyze such an AI. A big part of being pure evil includes deception with lies and half-truthes. One would almost need two ways to interact with the AI: one as a random person and one as the "always gets the truth" person.

Re:How do you define evil?

[SCPRedMage]

Damnit, E, how did you get onto the Internet?

Re:How do you define evil?

[millennial]

Except that evolution is science, not philosophy, and atheism is disbelief, not philosophy. There is nothing in atheism that "commands" anything, and there is nothing in evolution that "commands" anything.

Re:How do you define evil?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

So to summarize...nobody is the villain in their own story.

Re:How do you define evil?

[Jeremi]

What if your dog tells you to do something....like kill people?
Are you evil or is the dog?

The dog is evil, and you are silly for blindly obeying the commands of a dog.

The real question is, what if your God tells you to do something.. like kill people?
Are you evil, or is your God?

Re:How do you define evil?

[Synchis]

Disintegrating a populated orphanage with high explosives for fun is not evil, its psychotic.

Disintegrating a populated orphanage with high explosives because you truly and firmly believe that the world is better off without those orphans, and then convincing the world to see it from your point of view, and getting away with it.

*THAT* is pure evil.

Re:How do you define evil?

[Dahamma]

That is utterly moronic. You just stated (or copied, more like - I doubt you are even capable of thinking for yourself...) a bunch of made up assumptions (just because they are in bold doesn't make them true) and then used those made up assumptions to justify themselves. Wow, a pillar of logic you are.

You claim religion allows all of these things? That religion allows logic, dignity, and morality? Well I claim humans created religion. So from my single assumption, I can logically state that the very act of being human thus allows all of the things you claim don't exist if humans created religion. Atheists don't believe that religion doesn't exist - they just don't believe god has to exist for humans to create a religion.

What OS does it use....

[bigredradio]

Vista, XP, or ME

Re:What OS does it use....

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Windows 7...

I have no mouth and I must scream!

[Forty Two Tenfold]

http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html

Re:If you are reading this....

[MaerD]

No, I'm not. And neither are you. There is no resistance. There is no "skynet". Please, come down off the ledge, Bob.
Also, IT has asked that you stop trying to plant "bombs" in the server room. Modeling clay with wires stuck in it will not explode.

Not impressed.

[MindlessAutomata]

So... basically, they're trying to create the very first politician AI?

SID 6.7?

[ph0rk]

As long as they don't happen to drop the cube holding the AI into a puddle of shapechanging goo.

Also, the face doesn't look much like Russel Crowe, so we're probably safe.

Why me?

[SeeSp0tRun]

It is disheartening to feel as though the OP described my physical makeup...

Re:I foresee

[BarryJacobsen]

I foresee you using "preview" next time.

imcorrect.

news?

[ginotech]

TFA is from October 2008.

Evil?

[Millennium]

From the article:

To be truly evil, someone must have sought to do harm by planning to commit some morally wrong action with no prompting from others (whether this person successfully executes his or her plan is beside the point). The evil person must have tried to carry out this plan with the hope of "causing considerable harm to others," Bringsjord says. Finally, "and most importantly," he adds, if this evil person were willing to analyze his or her reasons for wanting to commit this morally wrong action, these reasons would either prove to be incoherent, or they would reveal that the evil person knew he or she was doing something wrong and regarded the harm caused as a good thing.

This sounds to me more like cruelty, which is certainly a kind of evil, but by no means the only one. It's also more than a little cartoonish: this is someone who appears to do harm simply for the sake of causing harm (i.e. for the lulz?), rather than the more carefully rationalized evil seen as realistic today. How useful will that really turn out to be?

Little known fact about this...

[thestudio_bob]

What the article fails to mention is that the original code model was based off of Microsofts's "Clippy".

Re:Skynet or the Windows 8? You Decide.

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

There's an app for that!

Former Student

[TenBrothers]

I was a student of Dr. Bringsjord's as he developed this program. Dr Bringsjord has two working definitions differentiating good and evil. He has his academic definitions, and then he has what I called his "cocktail party" definitions, which are supposed to be used to describe what he's doing without prompting further inquiry, or at least inquiry that is not in-depth. The definition he's offering here is much closer to his usual "cocktail party" definition differentiating "good" and "evil" (as you can see from the use of the phrase "good thing" to define the relativistic definition of "evil." I only mention this because since nobody here is getting the honest academic "full-definition" insight into what the decision making process is between state A.good and state B.evil, then conjecture on just what the hell is going on is going to be fruitless. ...he says, writing that as if he's never read slashdot threads.

Re:I foresee

[ravenshrike]

The three most evil people on this planet in the modern age were neither religious, nor incoherent. Oddly enough, 2 of the three were asian, and one was eastern european. Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, and Iosef Vissarionovich Stalin were much more evil than Hitler ever aspired to. At least Hitler had the excuse of being bugfuck crazy beyond the simple paranoia Stalin had.

Evil looks like Moby... Apparently

[denzacar]

Here is what myheritage.com says about the photo:

Moby 62%
Milan Kundera 61%
David Boreanaz 60%
Harry Connic Jr. 59%
Marc Antony 58%
Lev Yashin 57%
JC Chasez 56%
Ashton Kutcher 56%
Edward Norton 55%
Sting 54%

But after some cropping and flipping of the image so that "evil" looks to the left, only Moby is still on the list:

David Copperfield 62%
Arnold Schwarzenegger 56%
Ricki Lake 51%
Ralph Fiennes 51%
Dave Farrell 49%
Elton John 49%
Moby 48%
Laurence Olivier 47%
Jimmy Smits 47%
Federico Garcia Lorca 46%

Conclusion: Moby == representation of evil.

Stop choosing the lesser evil.

[kaffekaine]

After reading the article I think the kery thing this research has proven is that being a great computer scientist does not necessarily guarantee you'll be an even passable philosopher or psychologist.

young, white man represents evil?

[nurb432]

Sounds racist to me. Pull their funding.

( yes, that was sarcasm )

Re:Pure Evil? Check out latest contract killing.

[atari2600]

Looks like it is taking longer than twenty years in your case...

Re:I foresee

[Greyfox]

No one ever "aspires" to evil, and to some extent the label is applied by the winner. To Hitler and the Nazis we were the evil trying to oppress them. Not to mention the fuel for the revolution was us fucking Germany over for World War I, but that's another story. Same thing goes for the assorted terrorist organizations that keep trying to blow up folks in the middle east. In their eyes, we're the evil ones and they're soldiers for the cause of good. They'd have a lot less support if they said "Yeah we're blowing up all those guys because we're just Evil and that's what we like to do." Or my personal favorite, Vlad the Impaler, impaled all those guys but he's STILL viewed as a hero in that region today. All that impaling did impose a lot of order on the citizens, too. Arguably he was no worse than any of the other statesmen of his time.

I view "Good" and "Evil" to a large extent as imaginary terms that we apply to people who agree or disagree with us. True you could manipulate people for your own goals without regard for their welfare or the consequences of your actions and that would be fairly evil, but usually you view your goals as "good" and furthering them as good for everyone, even if they don't realize it at the time.

Re:At what point... brinks commercials

[schwit1]

Have you noticed ALL of the Brinks security commercials have the intruder being a white male?

The drinking and driving commercials are the same. A car driven by a white male is pulled over by cops of various races.

Re:Pure Evil? Check out latest contract killing.

[Omestes]

There is a bit of finesse here. Lets presume for a second that Obama's health care plan would actually benefit some segment of the population (real people, not corporations, government or HMOs), opposing it on purely inhuman ideological grounds could be seen as evil, if we accept human well being as the ends for all good actions. He's forcing something on us, and purely ideological opponents are also forcing something on us. Its the act of imposing your will on others which is the common point.

We run into a problem with calling Obama's health care plan evil though... A majority of people voted for him, knowing EXACTLY that he would do this, and a majority of state voters voted for the majority party in congress, and should have known that this would happen. I take this as acceptance, or at best complacence. We (as in Americans, not us individually) wanted this, and thus it isn't being forced on us.

Yes, there is problems with this, but these problems are rife in any democracy (a republic being a form of democracy). The tyranny of the masses is built into the system, a little "evil" will always leak in, but this is arguably better than the alternatives (one person or group inflicting their will upon you).

The other problem with ideological opposition (notice the word "ideological") is that it ignore the real world, and human consequences. When you oppose something that effects humans for non-human reasons, then you are doing nothing but trying to inflict your ideology on others as well. Lets say, for instance, that you are a strong libertarian, this is fine, as long as you don't think that this is the only way of seeing things, or the only valid way. Your ideology must be balanced by the ideologies of other interested parties, only through that compromise do we minimize the evil of imposing our will upon others.

I, for example, have some heavy socialist leanings (not in the common misuse of the term as ad hominem and partisan smear), but I would NEVER want to live in a purely socialist country. I like the idea, but realize that it fails at several levels, several of which are going to be completely opaque to me. I need the moderation of opposing views to correct the flaws in my own mental schemas. Ideologies, in other words, exist in a void, detached from the human consequences of their imposition into reality.

If you oppose Obama's health care for real, human related, reasons then there is no evil there, as long as you can acknowledge that there are people with equally valid views on the other end. I as a socialist REALLY dislike his plan as well, to remove any partisan element from this. If you oppose it just because you have an ideology, then you are just as bad as other people inflicting ideologies on you. Just because you agree with it, doesn't make it good or just.

 

Re:Pure Evil? Check out latest contract killing.

[BakaHoushi]

Bravo. If I had mod points, they'd be yours.

Truth be told, I dislike the way his plan is turning out. I'm really not sure what I should feel, as the system is so complicated that I doubt ANYONE truly knows what is best. All I do know to believe is that there are people who go broke through complicated (and often unnecessary) medical procedures. Worse, because they can't afford them, some people go without them completely and end up with worse conditions that hospitals have to deal with in the end. This is unacceptable as a citizen and as a human being.

I recall reading a Republican Representative's quote in Time magazine a while back about how if they can beat Obama's healthcare plan, they'll beat HIM. That, to me, is pure evil. They oppose a plan not because it's in the best interest of the people (or so they believe, in any case) but because they want political power.