4 ms·

I'm not sure it's so much a matter of picking negative consequences out of the blue sky of possible consequences, but rather wondering, "What happens if our sof

by ksdale 8y ago

I'm not sure it's so much a matter of picking negative consequences out of the blue sky of possible consequences, but rather wondering, "What happens if our software works exactly how we intend and we gain the ability to really manipulate people in a certain way?" I agree completely that it's hard or impossible to just predict in general how society will react to technology. But in many cases, there are people designing systems specifically for the purpose of getting people to behave a certain way. This implicitly acknowledges that they believe that they can affect behavior in a predictable way. If they can make predictions one way and be correct enough to profit from it, they should be capable of making predictions about things that could go wrong. I agree completely that predicting something like what Facebook will look like 10 years in the future is impossible, and there's surely a lot of research where the possible consequences are infinite. A lot of results in CS research are like someone developing a new material - "Like, sure, this could be used to make a new, extra deadly tank or something, but it could be used for literally anything." In that sense, it's not useful to make predictions, but I think there's also a lot of research going on at Facebook and Google that looks closer to what I mentioned above, where they absolutely have an intention to change people's behavior and so probably also have the ability to predict the consequences of their complete success.

sdrinf 8y ago
These are two different set of people: computer scientists develop algos / ml / etc, and want to publish them. UX designers , entrepreneurs, and other customer-focused people in the industry observe human behavior, and (amongst other activities) design traps around them. It is not useful to expect good predictions from the former group, and the later group isn't really interested in publishing in CS.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
  The Challenger disaster is a good example of the engineer vs group dynamic https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/21/470870426/challenger-engineer-who-warned-of-shuttle-disaster-dies https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/21/470870426...
nostrademons 8y ago
"What happens if our software works exactly how we intend and we gain the ability to really manipulate people in a certain way?" This is still really difficult, and quite ethically fraught. When I was in high school and college (late 90s & early 2000s), I was one of the techno-utopians who believed that the Internet would usher in a new era of censorship-resistant free speech, free information, and free exchange of ideas with people across the globe, regardless of whatever walk of life you happened to come from. It would give a voice to marginalized people regardless of how niche their views are. By and large, it succeeded in this, and this site (HackerNews) is an example of that. I have no idea who you are or where you come from, and it could be literally half a world away from me, but I can still post this comment, and probably hundreds to thousands of people will read it. Yet nowhere on our radar screen was the idea that maybe we wished some of those marginalized groups would stay marginalized. That in addition to giving a voice to dissidents and hobbyists and nerds and subcultures, we would also give a voice to racists and militants and pedophiles and drug traffickers. Why would we even consider them? The definition of "marginalized" involves being "out of sight of the mainstream". Yet now, one of the main complaints being levied against Silicon Valley companies is that they aren't doing enough to police hate speech or kick undesirable groups off their platforms. And then this is hugely ethically fraught, because I'm sure that from the perspective of people in those groups, I'm the evil powermonger, and they are just exercising their human right to believe what they want. Silicon Valley has remained largely libertarian in outlook, but what if people get their wish and it starts cracking down on undesirables? Who's to say that your group would actually be one of the desirables? The new boss starts to look an awful lot like the old boss.

by ksdale 8y ago

sdrinf 8y ago

These are two different set of people: computer scientists develop algos / ml / etc, and want to publish them. UX designers , entrepreneurs, and other customer-focused people in the industry observe human behavior, and (amongst other activities) design traps around them. It is not useful to expect good predictions from the former group, and the later group isn't really interested in publishing in CS.

0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
The Challenger disaster is a good example of the engineer vs group dynamic https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/21/470870426/challenger-engineer-who-warned-of-shuttle-disaster-dies https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/21/470870426...

nostrademons 8y ago

"What happens if our software works exactly how we intend and we gain the ability to really manipulate people in a certain way?" This is still really difficult, and quite ethically fraught. When I was in high school and college (late 90s & early 2000s), I was one of the techno-utopians who believed that the Internet would usher in a new era of censorship-resistant free speech, free information, and free exchange of ideas with people across the globe, regardless of whatever walk of life you happened to come from. It would give a voice to marginalized people regardless of how niche their views are. By and large, it succeeded in this, and this site (HackerNews) is an example of that. I have no idea who you are or where you come from, and it could be literally half a world away from me, but I can still post this comment, and probably hundreds to thousands of people will read it. Yet nowhere on our radar screen was the idea that maybe we wished some of those marginalized groups would stay marginalized. That in addition to giving a voice to dissidents and hobbyists and nerds and subcultures, we would also give a voice to racists and militants and pedophiles and drug traffickers. Why would we even consider them? The definition of "marginalized" involves being "out of sight of the mainstream". Yet now, one of the main complaints being levied against Silicon Valley companies is that they aren't doing enough to police hate speech or kick undesirable groups off their platforms. And then this is hugely ethically fraught, because I'm sure that from the perspective of people in those groups, I'm the evil powermonger, and they are just exercising their human right to believe what they want. Silicon Valley has remained largely libertarian in outlook, but what if people get their wish and it starts cracking down on undesirables? Who's to say that your group would actually be one of the desirables? The new boss starts to look an awful lot like the old boss.