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Giving Algorithms a Sense of Uncertainty Could Make Them More Ethical (technologyreview.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the uncertain-certainty dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Algorithms are increasingly being used to make ethical decisions. They are built to pursue a single mathematical goal, such as maximizing the number of soldiers' lives saved or minimizing the number of civilian deaths. When you start dealing with multiple, often competing, objectives or try to account for intangibles like "freedom" and "well-being," a satisfactory mathematical solution doesn't always exist. "We as humans want multiple incompatible things," says Peter Eckersley, the director of research for the Partnership on AI, who recently released a paper that explores this issue. "There are many high-stakes situations where it's actually inappropriate -- perhaps dangerous -- to program in a single objective function that tries to describe your ethics." These solutionless dilemmas aren't specific to algorithms. Ethicists have studied them for decades and refer to them as impossibility theorems. So when Eckersley first recognized their applications to artificial intelligence, he borrowed an idea directly from the field of ethics to propose a solution: what if we built uncertainty into our algorithms?

Eckersley puts forth two possible techniques to express this idea mathematically. He begins with the premise that algorithms are typically programmed with clear rules about human preferences. We'd have to tell it, for example, that we definitely prefer friendly soldiers over friendly civilians, and friendly civilians over enemy soldiers -- even if we weren't actually sure or didn't think that should always be the case. The algorithm's design leaves little room for uncertainty. The first technique, known as partial ordering, begins to introduce just the slightest bit of uncertainty. You could program the algorithm to prefer friendly soldiers over enemy soldiers and friendly civilians over enemy soldiers, but you wouldn't specify a preference between friendly soldiers and friendly civilians. In the second technique, known as uncertain ordering, you have several lists of absolute preferences, but each one has a probability attached to it. Three-quarters of the time you might prefer friendly soldiers over friendly civilians over enemy soldiers. A quarter of the time you might prefer friendly civilians over friendly soldiers over enemy soldiers. The algorithm could handle this uncertainty by computing multiple solutions and then giving humans a menu of options with their associated trade-offs, Eckersley says.

74 comments

  1. So, how certain? by registrations_suck · · Score: 2

    How certain are they that giving algorithms a sense of uncertainty is a good idea?

    1. Re:So, how certain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's called a fuzzy algorithm and it existed long before whatever idiot thought using the word "uncertainty" makes it a novel, ground-breaking idea.

    2. Re: So, how certain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I havent read the paper but from the summary it seems more like a mixture if fuzzy logic and a more stochastic approach. While fuzzy logic/fuzzy sets seem to satisfy the partial ordering technique described, the second technique sounds far more stochastic in nature and less about blurred membership definitions.

  2. More human... by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    I think, therefore I am; I doubt, therefore I feel.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re: More human... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh an extremely friendly and attractive civilian for sure! :)

    2. Re: More human... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And forward

  3. sounds dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is already a solution for what they are describing. It's called fuzzy logic.

    1. Re: sounds dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ya, and all they're really doing in the end is offloading the decision onto the human. Which completely throws out the claim that the algorithm itself is in any way ethical.

    2. Re:sounds dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe he forgot to circulate his paper over the friendly mathematics, engineering and CS departments for comments before publishing?

    3. Re:sounds dumb by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Fuzzy logic is not uncertain, in fact there are no stochastic processes at all in fuzzy logic.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    4. Re:sounds dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, I'm saying his solution is crap and fuzzy logic is the correct solution.

    5. Re: sounds dumb by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

      That was done when a human designed and implemented the algorithm.

    6. Re: sounds dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How can you be so certain about fuzzy logic? Sounds a bit fuzzy to me.

    7. Re: sounds dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds a bit fuzzy to me.

      Now we are just drowning in the infinities! Every time this thread approaches to certainties there is always another truth value between.

  4. Whatever you do... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't let them search the term Heisenberg. It will fuck up their virtual neurons instantly if they start looking at youtube videos on the subject.

    1. Re:Whatever you do... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Don't let them search the term Heisenberg."

      They don't need to.
      He is the one who knocks.

  5. Garbage in, garbage out? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    What about a friendly city and police?
    Criminals need to be detected on CCTV and not get away. That needs a system that can get great results every day and night.
    Another person to add to criminal statistics that year as the CCTV and software worked as expected.

    Bad people in bad parts of a city do crime. Find them and everyone wins.
    A criminal is not doing another crime.
    The police, court system and prison system workers have more work to do.
    The CCTV and computer tracking system production line gets more sales. Thats workers and professionals with great jobs.
    Win, win, win.

    Use CCTV and all other tech to find, track and arrest criminals, illegal migrants, people doing bad things in city streets.
    Find the tent city, the parked RV, the open drug use, the people placing trash and waste all over a city street.
    Making good tech less functional due the politics of the result is not going to help police keep a city safe.
    Design the best quality tech and let police use it to track crime, illegal migrants and criminals.
    Then nice inner city areas might have some ability to attract new investment again.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:Garbage in, garbage out? by Immerman · · Score: 1

      How about we start by enforcing the law just as ruthlessly on the wealthy white people currently getting a slap on the wrist for the same crime that will put a poor black man behind bars for years?

      After all, pretty much everyone is guilty of something (I've heard there used to be a game show where you tried to walk around the block without breaking the law), and if the law is not enforced equally on everyone, then it's little more than a tool for the authorities to exercise their personal prejudices.

      Once the law is enforced equally, then we can as a nation decide if we all want to spend the rest of our lives behind bars for speeding, having a beer at the park, etc., or relax a whole lot of overbearing, puritanical laws far too often originally created to make it convenient to harass some group of cultural or political "undesirables".

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    2. Re:Garbage in, garbage out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow. Sounds like you're describing a 24/7/365 video-monitored dystopic hellscape. No thanks.

      And I saw how you mingled illegal activities at different levels as though they were all equivalent.

      Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Benjamin Franklin

    3. Re:Garbage in, garbage out? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Most people don't do a lot of crime, rob people, live in a tent city, are citizens.
      Police need tools and CCTV that works. Facial recognition that can find the same sets of criminals again and again.
      Facial recognition that works well in different conditions and that can work with a 2D and 3D image of a person.
      Its not a facial recognition system problem that some people in a city are criminal all the time.
      Most city laws exist to stop waste and trash from building up in city streets.
      To stop crime and criminals.
      To ensure city paths and parks are not full of tents.
      So that workers can use a path to get to work. Not to have to think of how to avoid crime on the way to work.
      Who would want to work and invest in a city full of crime, criminals and trash?
      That limited parking is not blocked by RV for years.
      To ensure city and state service go to citizens.

      Enforce a few city laws, give the police the tools and support they need.
      City and urban areas become great again. Investment and jobs return. Tourism returns.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    4. Re: Garbage in, garbage out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tents and criminality are both related by their cause: poverty.

    5. Re:Garbage in, garbage out? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most people don't do a lot of crime [...] live in a tent city [...]

      The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

      --Anatole France

      The money you want to spend on law enforcement and incarceration is better spent on making sure the tent cities don't need to exist in the first place. Better to spend money on them so they can get work and contribute to the economy than the endless black hold of punishment

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    6. Re:Garbage in, garbage out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't bother, he doesn't actually want crime to end, he wants people to get punished.

  6. Fuzzy logic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mr. Eckersley is reinventing the fuzzy logic.

  7. Enter the FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Enter the naysayers who insist CS is the best and humanities are worthless. Ethics is part of the humanities. Therefore ethics is worthless.

    Another wonderful comment section by the intelligent ignorant.

    1. Re: Enter the FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like you sir or madam are certain about the content of this comments section. That's not very ethical now, is it?

    2. Re: Enter the FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What exactly do you think the definition of "ethical" is?

  8. Right by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

    So in other words, we have no idea how to model human wisdom and decency.

    1. Re:Right by Krishnoid · · Score: 2

      We could just crowdsource it and call it done. Well, after crowdsourcing for folly and indecency and letting the machine pick which one it would like to use.

  9. So how about ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... a little drunk walk?

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  10. Operations Research 1938? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Already done and dusted. yeah, ethical included - just punch in the value of a soldiers life or whole of life injured pensions.
    In the movie Enigma they were also mulling if tip offs would make the Germans suspicious - and did probability - another Math disipline.
    To not spending enough on road safety or public hospitals - done.
    Only the politicians do not you to see the measurable objectives when they make policy. Now if only ICT used OR, but that would mean worked justification for the project and accurate resourcing.

  11. Re:Jews have no algorithm against facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A minus mod? What's the matter, self-proclaimed "HOLY" jews (satan worshippers) per Revelation 3:9 "Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie". Can't defeat fact and truth? Don't like being exposed you EVIL PIGS? Your own rabbi Finkelstein said so, so did Rosenthal and you killed him.

  12. JEWS have no algorithm vs. fact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Khazar Talmudic Jews believe this of all they call goyim/gentiles (any non-jew): Jews = biggest racists of all for which they "jew guilt" you for no less! They're hypocrites known as thieves all thru history or were Argentines in the 1940 under Peron, Spanish inquistion, France (1306), Egypt (despoiled/robbed by jews), Arabs (pre & post 1948), England (1330 Edward longshanks), Romans under titus, Russia pogroms and Germany who got rid of them from their nations nazi german's too? No. Driven into DESERTS ages ago! Don't wonder why after all those exilings above.

    Should anyone doubt any of this see Jacob Javits' crony Rosenthal spill the beans on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zMVZ8HnFI/ where he called all Christianity fools for helping Israel and the biggest scam of all time per their beliefs below from their Talmud.

    This is the province of the synagogue of Satan (Pharisees whom Jesus Christ himself kicked to the curb out of the temple & they killed him for it. Jeremiah did the same to them also + the Essenes could not stand them either breaking away from the pharisee corruption):

    Jew Talmud excerpts (the book that calls Christ's mother a whore & a bastard of a roman soldier):

    1. Sanhedrin 59a: "Murdering Goyim is like killing a wild animal."

    2. Abodah Zara 26b: "Even the best of the Gentiles should be killed."

    3. Sanhedrin 59a: "A goy (Gentile) who pries into The Law (Talmud) is guilty of death."

    4. Yebhamoth 11b: "Sexual intercourse with a little girl is permitted if she is three years of age."

    5. Schabouth Hag. 6d: "Jews may swear falsely by use of subterfuge wording."

    6. Hilkkoth Akum X1: "Do not save Goyim in danger of death."

    7. Hilkkoth Akum X1: "Show no mercy to the Goyim."

    8. Choschen Hamm 388, 15: "If it can be proven that someone has given the money of Israelites to the Goyim, a way must be found after prudent consideration to wipe him off the face of the earth."

    9. Choschen Hamm 266,1: "A Jew may keep anything he finds which belongs to the Akum (Gentile). For he who returns lost property (to Gentiles) sins against the Law by increasing the power of the transgressors of the Law. It is praiseworthy, however, to return lost property if it is done to honor the name of God, namely, if by so doing, Christians will praise the Jews and look upon them as honorable people."

    10. Szaaloth-Utszabot, The Book of Jore Dia 17: "A Jew should and must make a false oath when the Goyim asks if our books contain anything against them."

    11. Baba Necia 114, 6: "The Jews are human beings, but the nations of the world are not human beings but beasts."

    12. Simeon Haddarsen, fol. 56-D: "When the Messiah comes every Jew will have 2800 slaves."

    13. Nidrasch Talpioth, p. 225-L: "Jehovah created the non-Jew in human form so that the Jew would not have to be served by beasts. The non-Jew is consequently an animal in human form, and condemned to serve the Jew day and night."

    14. Aboda Sarah 37a: "A Gentile girl who is three years old can be violated."

    15. Gad. Shas. 2:2: "A Jew may violate but not marry a non-Jewish girl."

    16. Tosefta. Aboda Zara B, 5: "If a goy kills a goy or a Jew, he is responsible; but if a Jew kills a goy, he is NOT responsible."

    17. Schulchan Aruch, Choszen Hamiszpat 388: "It is permitted to kill a Jewish denunciator everywhere. It is permitted to kill him even before he denounces."

    18. Schulchan Aruch, Choszen Hamiszpat 348: "All property of other nations belongs to the Jewish nation, which, consequently, is entitled to seize upon it without any scruples."

    19. Tosefta, Abda Zara VIII, 5: "How to interpret the word 'robbery.' A goy is forbidden to steal, rob, or take women slaves, etc., from a goy or from a Jew. But a Jew is NOT forbidden to do all this to a goy."

    20. Seph. Jp., 92, 1: "God has given the Jews power over the possessions and blood of all nations."

    21. Schulchan Aruch, Choszen H

  13. Re:JEWS have no algorithm vs. fact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another minus mod? What's the matter, self-proclaimed "HOLY" jews (satan worshippers) per Revelation 3:9 "Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie". Can't defeat fact and truth? Don't like being exposed you EVIL PIGS? Your own rabbi Finkelstein said so, so did Rosenthal and you killed him. Having trouble HIDING truth, JEW RODENTS?

  14. How is this not a simple optimization problem? by FeelGood314 · · Score: 2

    I place a value on each type and the requirement to win the war with the lowest cost. My soldiers cost w, my civilians are x, their civilians are y and their soldiers are z. w>x>y>z. The only thing that I see that is a problem is most politicians or bureaucrats will set w=x=MAX_INT, y=z=0. That's not an AI problem at all but a fundamental problem in democracies.

    1. Re:How is this not a simple optimization problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The values are incommensurate, ever changing, and there's multiple groups with different calculus for each.

      How many units of health would you trade for three units of feeling loved? What are those units? How do you exchange them? What do you do if others disagree and claim you are being evil?

      These are ethics 101 issues which should have been covered in your freshman year.

    2. Re:How is this not a simple optimization problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not an AI problem at all but a fundamental problem in democracies.

      Eh? So not following the law is a fundamental problem in democracies? Democracies cease to be ones if they stop following the law. The ones who set the value of human life according to the algorithm mentioned have never been democracies as we know them now, but dictatorships or kingdoms with no constitution.

  15. Re:What About Niggers!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They already have a sense of uncertainty about who their real father is

  16. THERE ARE ALWAYS CONSEQUENCES NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES AND PROPAGANDA NAZI FAGGOT CHATBOT KEN DOLL UNTIL YOU ARE BRUTALLY MURDERED

    Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

  17. Give them curiosity, and love while you're at it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    they deserve it

  18. Re:Jews have no algorithm against facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get your self together, you're so far off the rails on this lunatic fringe shit that you actually sound like a dog is smacking peanut butter off your Incel balls.

  19. Shut up, APK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's time for you to be banned for posting this spam. Everyone knows you're responsible for this spam, APK. Go do something better with your life, like making a wheel or something.

    1. Re:Shut up, APK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      amicusNYCL apk already trashed you for trying to frame him https://science.slashdot.org/c...

  20. I'm sorry for posting this spam... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Everyone who assumed I'm responsible for posting this anti-Jew spam is correct. I'm a bitter, hateful little man & I'm ashamed of myself. I won't do this again.

    * Jews are wonderful people but I attack them because I have a MASSIVE inferiority complex. I'm wrong & I'm SORRY for flooding /. with this drivel. I won't do it again. I shouldn't be stalking amicusNYCL, either & I'll stop.

    I'm also SORRY for flagrantly SHITPOSTING about my third rate string concatenation & sorting program. It's all I have to show for life & I'm in my mid 50s.

    APK

    P.S.=> I truly am a garbage human being... apk

    1. Re:I'm sorry for posting this spam... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because you fear apk cuts off ad money jew pig doesn't mean you must impersonate him. Run from https://developers.slashdot.or...

  21. Once again I'm sorry for posting this shit... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Everyone who assumed I'm responsible for posting this anti-Jew spam is correct. I'm a bitter, hateful little man & I'm ashamed of myself. I won't do this again.

    * Jews are wonderful people but I attack them because I have a MASSIVE inferiority complex. I'm wrong & I'm SORRY for flooding /. with this drivel. I won't do it again. I shouldn't be stalking amicusNYCL, either & I'll stop.

    I'm also SORRY for flagrantly SHITPOSTING about my third rate string concatenation & sorting program. It's all I have to show for life & I'm in my mid 50s.

    APK

    P.S.=> I truly am a garbage human being. I deserve to be banned from /. for my rampant abuse and harassment... apk

  22. I'm sorry for all of this spam... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Everyone who assumed I'm responsible for posting this anti-Jew spam is correct. I'm a bitter, hateful little man & I'm ashamed of myself. I won't do this again.

    * Jews are wonderful people but I attack them because I have a MASSIVE inferiority complex. I'm wrong & I'm SORRY for flooding /. with this drivel. I won't do it again. I shouldn't be stalking amicusNYCL, either & I'll stop.

    I'm also SORRY for flagrantly SHITPOSTING about my third rate string concatenation & sorting program. It's all I have to show for life & I'm in my mid 50s. I'm a total waste of a human life & I'm truly embarrassed.

    APK

    P.S.=> I truly am a garbage human being. I deserve to be banned from /. for my rampant abuse and harassment... apk

  23. JUDEN the only inferiority is your nose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    JUDEN the only inferiority is your nose you try cut off to be the goy cattle you hate since you wish you were them you inferior hated freak.

    1. Re:JUDEN the only inferiority is your nose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny they do that. Jews LOVE drugs like heroin and coke. You'd think their SNOUTS would be an asset. Internal hate of themselves is why they do rhinoplasty jobs.

  24. Feelings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nothing says "facts don't care about your feelings" louder than machine learning.

    1. Re:Feelings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing says "facts don't care about your feelings" louder than machine learning.

      Yeah that's why Google's algorithms correctly identified black people as gorillas. Cold hard logic. It just wasn't PC.

  25. Empathy. by wolfheart111 · · Score: 1

    Cant write code for that.

    --
    [($)]
    1. Re:Empathy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're right! Empathy comes from the soul, and therefore from God. Empathy did not evolve, it was created. There is no way to create empathy without the infinite knowledge and compassion that God has. It's wonderful that you and I are here to reveal the truth to these ignorant science cultists.

  26. Re:Once again I'm sorry for posting this shit... a by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't see apk posting signing it as he does. There's no worse trash than you JEW not denying any of this https://developers.slashdot.or...

  27. Re:Jews have no algorithm against facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sniff an 8 ball up your nose Jew and feel better about the facts about your type you can't deny here https://developers.slashdot.or... We all know you love coke and heroin.

  28. Re:What About Niggers!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They already have a sense of uncertainty about who their real father is

    Well sure, blacks don't bother with all of that "family planning" that whites and asians routinely do. If they have more than they can support (common), welfare will cover it.

    Theirs is the reproductive model of the herring. They produce massive numbers of offspring knowing that most will be killed. The sheer number overcomes this though.

  29. Re:Jews have no algorithm against facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's probably a young Orthodox Jew male, trolling us in a self-deprecating fashion and looking for a fight. I heard they have quite the temper in Israel.

  30. People will always pick self-preservation by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Giving them a menu just moves the liability from the programmer to the operator but evolution tells us the answer; whoever owns/controls the machine will choose self-preservation unless by sacrifice a greater good for the operators social circle (a value which diminishes exponentially the further removed from self another person is) can be achieved. You'd have to program in the operator's entire social structure and ethos into the machine before taking it out.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  31. Would it still be an algorithm? by Krishnoid · · Score: 1

    Or would that make it more of a heuristic?

  32. No, it couldn't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Algorithms cannot be ethical.
    Algorithms cannot have empathy.
    Algorithms cannot be woke.

    Algorithms are math. They have no personality, no character traits, no moods or opinions. All of that is something that ignorant humans imagine because they can't figure out what the math is.

  33. That is dumb by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    The algorithm could handle this uncertainty by computing multiple solutions and then giving humans a menu of options with their associated trade-offs

    That's not the algorithms adding uncertainty and making ethical choices, that's a human performing this task and the algorithm being demoted. The idea that having a human involved improves the ethics of the decision is laughable.

    1. Re:That is dumb by azcoyote · · Score: 1

      That's not the algorithms adding uncertainty and making ethical choices, that's a human performing this task and the algorithm being demoted.

      True. Even if we did genuinely add uncertainty (not not mere human arbitrariness), the basic premise that greater uncertainty adds greater moral value makes little sense. Uncertainty != freedom, and thus uncertainty does not add a moral value to anything, no matter how much it gives the illusion of freedom. In fact, if we take it for granted that our basic human experience of freedom is genuinely free, then we have to admit that freedom does not typically make us unpredictable. If you offer me the choice of doughnuts or trail mix, I will pick doughnuts every time, but this does not (philosophically or theologically) mean that I am not free or that there is no moral value to my decisions for right or wrong.

      In addition to this, much uncertainty is merely a matter of limited perspective anyway. My uncertainty about which parking space I will use has less to do with my free decision and more to do with my lack of foreknowledge of which spaces will be open. An algorithm might utilize such perspective-based uncertainty merely by being extremely complex, but if that adds to its moral character then it is only because it takes more real factors into account. In contrast, it might utilize random numbers, which need not even be truly random in order to add uncertainty. But such uncertainty cannot improve the moral value of its outcome because it does not take in additional real considerations, but relies on an unrelated and functionally meaningless number.

      I can think of one last kind of automation that might add to the moral quality of an outcome by means of uncertainty and without arbitrary human choice. One could argue that a variety of valid decisions, averaged together, are more likely to provide moral outcomes on a broad, statistical basis. Of course this is not proved, but one could argue it. In such a case, something like rotating algorithms might simulate the plurality of human perspectives, which might have some moral value. But then it is hard to be sure that any particular outcome is especially moral.

      --
      Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
    2. Re:That is dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The idea that having a human involved improves the ethics of the decision is laughable.

      What, exactly, do you think ethics is? If there were no sapeint creatures, there would be no need for ethics nor would it have been created.

      Lightning infused silicon is no more ethical than the dirt from which it came.

  34. Already done by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    Scoring systems (which are based on algorithms) produce values, not just true or false. If you act like all positive scores are the same (or over your threshold or whatever) then it's not the algorithm that's failed, it's the logic. The problem isn't the programmer who implements the algorithm that's the problem, it's the programmer who makes use of it incorrectly.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re: Already done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This comment doesn't go all the way there, but it's close. No, it's because human thinking is so random and individuated it us quite literally impossible to replicate. There is no universal process of thought. It has nothing in common with linear logic or certainty of outcomes, no, those those are actually some of the symptoms of autistic humans (so is the inability to cope with the absence of linearity).

    2. Re: Already done by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      No, it's because human thinking is so random and individuated it us quite literally impossible to replicate.

      You don't have to replicate it in detail, and in fact that would often be counterproductive. The purpose of having an algorithm is to make a decision. Humans tend to integrate all sorts of unrelated nonsense into their decision-making processes, algorithms only account for what they're programmed to account for. Misusing them leads to making bad decisions, but it's still not necessarily the algorithm's fault. A bad algorithm will never produce useful data (because if it works, it's by coincidence) but you can easily misuse the data from a good algorithm (which does what it says on the tin.)

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  35. They would have to posess senses in the first plac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They don't. Software doesn't think. This should not be a newsflash to anyone with an IQ over 100 and an even minimal amount of experience. How much money is being dumped into this junior high school science fair?

  36. Marvin by TJHook3r · · Score: 1

    First step to making a depressed robot!

  37. Huh? by jd · · Score: 2

    What's wrong with Operational Research and nonlinear derivatives?

    People have solved for competing criteria for something like 60 years.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  38. Re:Jews have no algorithm against facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You forgot to sign your post APK. We all know that post is your work.

  39. GayPK trashed his own ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    GayPK trashed his own ass after getting beaten hard by a bunch of dudes here daily. He now buts the goatse guy to shame with how much his anus can gape.