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Can We Build Ethics Into Automated Decision-Making? (oreilly.com)
"Machines will need to make ethical decisions, and we will be responsible for those decisions," argues Mike Loukides, O'Reilly Media's vice president of content strategy:
We are surrounded by systems that make ethical decisions: systems approving loans, trading stocks, forwarding news articles, recommending jail sentences, and much more. They act for us or against us, but almost always without our consent or even our knowledge. In recent articles, I've suggested the ethics of artificial intelligence itself needs to be automated. But my suggestion ignores the reality that ethics has already been automated... The sheer number of decisions that need to be made means that we can't expect humans to make those decisions. Every time data moves from one site to another, from one context to another, from one intent to another, there is an action that requires some kind of ethical decision...
Ethical problems arise when a company's interest in profit comes before the interests of the users. We see this all the time: in recommendations designed to maximize ad revenue via "engagement"; in recommendations that steer customers to Amazon's own products, rather than other products on their platform. The customer's interest must always come before the company's. That applies to recommendations in a news feed or on a shopping site, but also how the customer's data is used and where it's shipped. Facebook believes deeply that "bringing the world closer together" is a social good but, as Mary Gray said on Twitter, when we say that something is a "social good," we need to ask: "good for whom?" Good for advertisers? Stockholders? Or for the people who are being brought together? The answers aren't all the same, and depend deeply on who's connected and how....
It's time to start building the systems that will truly assist us to manage our data.
The article argues that spam filters provide a surprisingly good set of first design principles. They work in the background without interfering with users, but always allow users to revoke their decisions, and proactively seek out user input in ambiguous or unclear situations.
But in the real world beyond our inboxes, "machines are already making ethical decisions, and often doing so badly. Spam detection is the exception, not the rule."
Ethical problems arise when a company's interest in profit comes before the interests of the users. We see this all the time: in recommendations designed to maximize ad revenue via "engagement"; in recommendations that steer customers to Amazon's own products, rather than other products on their platform. The customer's interest must always come before the company's. That applies to recommendations in a news feed or on a shopping site, but also how the customer's data is used and where it's shipped. Facebook believes deeply that "bringing the world closer together" is a social good but, as Mary Gray said on Twitter, when we say that something is a "social good," we need to ask: "good for whom?" Good for advertisers? Stockholders? Or for the people who are being brought together? The answers aren't all the same, and depend deeply on who's connected and how....
It's time to start building the systems that will truly assist us to manage our data.
The article argues that spam filters provide a surprisingly good set of first design principles. They work in the background without interfering with users, but always allow users to revoke their decisions, and proactively seek out user input in ambiguous or unclear situations.
But in the real world beyond our inboxes, "machines are already making ethical decisions, and often doing so badly. Spam detection is the exception, not the rule."
I'm not sure I consider the Amazon directing you to Amazon products as a very good example of "Automation", since that has a giant bias plugged into the engine by Amazon. You are trying to ascribe ethics to a system where humans are obviously in firm and direct control over results.
To me considering ethics and automation is more of a general concern where the automation is making derived choices that are pretty far removed from human directive. I think you can build in ethics to try and be kind to people, it's not impossible - but even the choice to try and include some kind of ethical directive, is still really at the mercy of humans and how much time and effort they are willing to put into such things...
Perhaps the most effective solution is for some company to come up with a really kick-ass ethical choice helper for automation, that becomes so popular that companies are clamoring to include it. Otherwise it will get placed in the asme leaky lifeboat that Accessibility is always placed in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wrote that subject line as a lead-in:
Like 'mercy', 'ethics' requires understanding of human beings and human-related matters.
Since the poor, weak excuse for 'AI' they keep slinging around lately cannot 'think', and therefore is entirely incapable of understanding humans, they are also incapable of being 'ethical'.
Someone will now attempt to argue that 'ethics' is just a set of rules to follow -- or perhaps I should say 'laws' -- and there are always exceptions to rules and laws where there are humans and human lives to consider. Therefore: machines should not be involved in making decisions requiring 'ethics', they are entirely unqualified to do so by their very nature.
Furthermore: all so-called 'AIs' should be supervised by humans at all times; no 'autonomy'. There always needs to be at least one human being there to allow or disallow what any of these machines does.
The programmer is ethical.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Automated systems that apply 'known' and accepted rules equally, is maths. Those formulation of those rules is ethics and is fine as long as the majority are aware of the rules and approve of them. The more impactful the rules, the more it could favour one against the other, the greater majority required to apply that rule but the starting point should always be more that 50% of the eligible citizenry and the upper limit, depends which you favour mathematically fractions or decimal places, it make a difference, as in 2 out of 3, probably the upper limit of foolish majority restraint, (decimals is more a choice between 60% and 70% for whole numbers sake but doesn't read as well as 2 out of 3 or 2 to 1).
The difference between AI and straight maths, of course corrupted AI which makes unethical decisions to favour it's programmers, versus a simple spreadsheet, which applies the rules, that everyone is aware of and the majority have agreed to.
The silly bullshit waffling around about mob rule, what a crock of shit, who complains about mob rule, the 1% who consider the entirely of the 99% the mob, the opposite of mob rule (majority rule, which is just emptily slandered by calling it a mob), is entirely corrupt elite rule, who inevitable govern to suit themselves at the expense of the mob and fear the mob, the majority, will hole the elite, the extreme minority accountable for their corruption, avarice and very venal and abusive natures.
Yeah, I want automated decision making, fuck AI and fuck the cunts who propose it, you arseholes are just totally full of shit (AI as a layer of bullshit to hide decision making that favours a tiny minority at the expense of the majority, a new layer of bullshit added to the old elite lies). I want those maths rules to be open and clear and up for debate and affirmation or rejection by the majority, maybe a super majority in some cases 2 out of 3 or 2 for and 1 against.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Can we build ethics into Human decision-making? Only once we have done this do we have any hope of building it into AI.
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Seriously, how do you define "ethics" so that it would be an acceptable definition to, well, everyone?
Because it won't be accepted as "ethical" unless its decisions agree with you (for all values of "you", including "me").
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Asimov was NOT saying here are 3 simple laws you can program your robots with and everything will be hunky dory.
He was saying the Exact Opposite!
If you actually read and understood any of his robot stories, the theme was consistent: robots are no better than we program them to be and they can never be as good/smart/ethical as we are, period.
The 3 laws robot short stories are all well written (Asimov, after all) and tell compelling and educational stories about robotic potential when given decision making ability outside a well defined prescribed rules (such as in manufacturing where there are no real decisions to be made, just a script blindly followed).
I know none of you will actually read them and you will keep referring to them and getting it entirely backwards, but at least I tried.
Things that were ethical when I was a kid would mortify today's people - bringing guns to school, designated smoking areas for students, nude swim class, bullying as a way life... no, ethics is a variable based on time, race, age, and income.... Build "ethics" into any algorithm and the masses will find it unethical.
Currently the various expert systems and automation have zero morals and ethics. Their only criteria are maximize profit, minimize risk. If someone ends up dying in screaming agony, meh.
This is just another extension of the principle that the only people you can get on the phone are people with no power to say yes. Their job isn't to make an ethical decision, their job is to make sure the people with authority to make a decision don't have to personally feel the consequences of tossing ethics out the window.
Same with the software. The programmers are just following orders, it's not like they're using the software on actual people. The people using it are just following orders, it's not like they wrote the software to make those decisions. The people at the top just specified software and ordered it's use. It's not actual people, just boring statistical data on a quarterly report.
Of course, in reality the software is an extension of those who give the orders. They just want people to blame "the computer" for as long as possible, just like in the '70s when, according to the CSR on the phone, the computer was infallible.
"The customer's interest must always come before the company's."
Which customer? Is the company thriving, expanding, and being able to take advantage of economies of scale to provide better and cheaper product to future customers considered in customer's interest or not? Or are we talking about customers who can't afford the product, so we should just give them the product for free and bankrupt the company, since customer interest comes first? Or are the workers at the company also customers, or is it ethical to exploit them just to provide cheaper products?
The above are hyperbole's, but herein lies the problem, if you want to put "customer" interest above the company, you must specify "which customers".
I paid for the car. I expect it to protect my life first.
Have gnu, will travel.
I think you can build in ethics to try and be kind to people
Ethics is not about being kind to people it is about doing the right thing. For example, a system to spot cheating on an exam is not going to be particularly kind to the people it catches and it would be highly unethical for it to be kind by ignoring the cheating. Since doing the "right thing" is subjective and extremely contextual any ethics in automated decision making is going to have to be directed by a human and, since people may vary on what they believe is ethical, very hard to get right.
Even something very basic like not killing people is not going to be easy to implement e.g. should an automated car prioritize the lives of the occupants over others or vice versa? It's made even harder by the fact that computer algorithms do not comprehend the ethical consequences of their choices: all the programmer does is tweak the parameters to make it behave in a way that they believe is ethical which ultimately means the "ethics" will be determined by large corporations or, if regulated, governments which is frankly rather a depressing thought givengovernments' and companies' past records on making ethical choices.
How do you train them without using content created by humans?
It takes you all the way back to expert systems. You have to throw out modern AI techniques for any systems that make decisions that affect humans. What else do humans use automation for, but things that affect humans?
A small part of ethics is in the form of rules that we can express and follow. Even ignoring that these rules constantly change and adapt, they are only a small part of the whole.
Most of ethics happens with at most very general, unspecific rules. Basically "don't be an asshole". Good luck expressing that in a programming language. Most of this requires you to be and feel like a human and to use empathy - by putting ourselves into another persons position in our imagination, we can deduce which behaviour we would find acceptable and which not if the roles were reversed. We are light years away from such a thing in AI.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'd read the Foundation Trilogy first, or at least the first book, before reading the robot novels. The robot novels are mysteries, but the Foundation Series is a must-read about the cyclic rise and fall of civilization
Who gets to decide who's ethics to follow.