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IANAL but based on my understanding, manslaughter generally includes some form of negligence (instead of premeditation like homicide) so until our laws and cult

IANAL but based on my understanding, manslaughter generally includes some form of negligence (instead of premeditation like homicide) so until our laws and culture catch up to the power these developers/decision makers actually hold, it's unlikely that a jury would blame the developers (or that a judge would even be sympathetic to the argument). Our society has agreed long ago that drinking and driving is irresponsible so thats why drunk driving fatalities are often prosecuted as manslaughter but the same is not true of software engineers and their creations. We need a sweeping cultural change outside of software engineering just like we had with civil engineers in the 20th century. Nowadays, a professional engineer (a phrase with a precise legal meaning) can be held criminally and civilly liable for negligence even when they are "just following irders." Unfortunately, we're at the very early wild wild west stages of the industry, before some big exposé or calamity completely shakes up the industry (i.e. Sinclair's The Jungle did for food, Carson's Silent Spring for pesticide use, or the 1906 SF earthquake for building codes).

nautilus12 9y ago
If you build a machine that builds random types of robots but are negligent to make sure it doesn't create robots that kill people, isn't that still criminal negligence? I think of these algorithms as being algorithms created and vetted out by algorithms, therefore, its negligent to not understand what they are doing. Since its difficult to know what they are doing, then the risk to use them in this way should be viewed as too great
- dorgo 9y ago
  It's the point of machine learning that no human needs (or often even can) understand how the machine is doing something as long as the target metric is optimized. We are building black boxes which translate input into desired output. And tomorrow we will have black boxes building other black boxes. The only way to ensure nobody is killed is to add "0 people killed" to the target function of the black box.
  - mygo 9y ago
    “World without end” amen
  - doomjunky 9y ago
    Every heuristic algorithm needs a tollerance peopleKilled() < ε
WillReplyfFood 9y ago
This does not always follow the rational way. If you hack society, and society rejects the hack- you can end up in a concentration camp.

nautilus12 9y ago

If you build a machine that builds random types of robots but are negligent to make sure it doesn't create robots that kill people, isn't that still criminal negligence? I think of these algorithms as being algorithms created and vetted out by algorithms, therefore, its negligent to not understand what they are doing. Since its difficult to know what they are doing, then the risk to use them in this way should be viewed as too great

dorgo 9y ago
It's the point of machine learning that no human needs (or often even can) understand how the machine is doing something as long as the target metric is optimized. We are building black boxes which translate input into desired output. And tomorrow we will have black boxes building other black boxes. The only way to ensure nobody is killed is to add "0 people killed" to the target function of the black box.
- mygo 9y ago
  “World without end” amen
- doomjunky 9y ago
  Every heuristic algorithm needs a tollerance peopleKilled() < ε

WillReplyfFood 9y ago

This does not always follow the rational way. If you hack society, and society rejects the hack- you can end up in a concentration camp.