3 ms·
The whole point of the trolley problem is there is no correct solution. It's a negative sum game. It's an ethical problem that has no solution. There is also no
by nkozyra 8y ago
The whole point of the trolley problem is there is no correct solution. It's a negative sum game. It's an ethical problem that has no solution. There is also no guarantee that a machine would kill one in lieu of five. Why? Training data.
The bigger point I'm making is people think AI acts in some form of posthuman reason. At this time no such thing exists: decisions are still bound to human bias, and we should at least consider optimizing with regard to the rules of a modern society.
- sokoloff 8y agoMy intentionally off-hand use of "correctly" was meant to indicate a belief that killing one innocent is strictly better than killing five and so if a machine is faced with choosing exactly one of those, the problem boils down to a comparison and a conditional jump, IMO. Humans are constrained by the knowledge that they would dread for the rest of their life the knowledge that they optionally and intentionally took an overt action which resulted in the death of an innocent person (to save five, but they would know they killed one when they could have done nothing and had "clean hands"). Machines don't need to suffer from this. I would hope that if we program safety-controlling systems that we wouldn't replace the compare and conditional-jump with "halt and catch fire".
- nkozyra 8y agoNo offense here, but none of that has anything to do with the dilemma. Human response would be biased in myriad ways. Agent response would be biased in myriad way. There is no correct solution. The lasting impact on a person (and lack thereof in an agent) has no bearing on the decision.
- sokoloff 8y agoReally? Why is the original/classic trolley problem in any way interesting if the future weight of the decision on the human has no bearing? (That's a serious question.) In the problem statement, an actor has control over whether this 1 person or those 5 people die. If they choose red, then 1. If they choose blue, then 5. (Failing to make a choice is choosing blue.) If after playing the scenario, they knew someone would use a Men In Black pen on them to completely forget what happened, is there a rational argument against choosing red? (I realize this might read like trolling, but I genuinely don't find the original problem a difficult one if you eliminate the human guilt aspect.)
- carapat_virulat 8y agoIf you choose to switch the track to kill 1 innocent to save 5, you open the door to things like a society where 1 innocent healthy person is killed to harvest the organs and save 5 innocents. The calculation is the same.
- Kaveren 8y agoUtilitarianism is very dangerous. Our current societal system isn't really based on utilitarianism as I see it, and I don't think we want to live in a world where a pure version of that school of thought is allowed to have any power. Actively choosing an action to deliberately kill someone else could be weighed negatively by the machine, it would depend on the programmer. I don't think you can apply the word "rational" here, if you don't take a position of utilitarianism, not deliberately killing the person could be axiomatically rational. It's not just about guilt.
- sokoloff 8y agoFair point on the mis-use of rational; thanks.