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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."
The programmer is ethical.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Can we build ethics into Human decision-making? Only once we have done this do we have any hope of building it into AI.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
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.
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.