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I think you are missing the point, the argument is AI ethical isn’t the same as can AI be ethical. AI is a tool, and while you can say some tools are easier to

I think you are missing the point, the argument is AI ethical isn’t the same as can AI be ethical. AI is a tool, and while you can say some tools are easier to abuse than others it has not baring on their ethics since tools have no ethics to begin with. And the leverage or force multiplication you get from a tool is directly tied to how easily it can be abused but also to how useful it is to you in general. Is a gun less ethical than a siringe because it can be used for violence? How about siginges fuling the drug epidemic? Are nukes less ethical than conventional weapons? Were the looms that the luddites seek the destroy unethical because they put people out of work? Should we consider combines and modern agriculture unethical because they drastically changed the balance of power of various nations? Ofc not as all of these arguments are silly and flawed once you actually begin to deconstruct them. This has nothing to do about gun control I have no problem controlling guns because I don’t want to get shot and if someone does break into my house I prefer them not to be armed. I also prefer the police not to be armed at all times because I think that it’s just as important not to bring a gun to a knife fight as it is the other way around if you don’t want to escalate things. I have no problem of regulating the application of AI when necessary. However it does not mean that I think that it has anything to do with its ethics but with ours. Some uses of AI could be deemed by society to be unethical for the same reason that society deemed that harvesting the organs of a random person to save 5 people is unethical because people wouldn’t be able to function knowing that they might be harvested at any moment. So if we bring this back to AI it’s not that I would think that say an AI run mass surveillance system is unethical because I’m not sure if the AI can make ethical decisions I would consider it unethical if society wouldn’t be able to function well under it.

adjkant 8y ago
> Is a gun less ethical than a syringe because it can be used for violence? A gun's purpose is to shoot bullets. A syringe has the purpose of delivering fluid into the human body. It's not hard to evaluate the ethics of the most common actions for each of those. While the tool itself technically has no ethics, owning or using the tool tends to have ethical implications. In a practical world, it is very fair to evaluate those implications, at least at an estimation level. Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of complexity when it comes to tools and ethics and no easy answers, and with the luddite example it brings in questions of work ethics and societal structure, so the loom doesn't exist in a vacuum. But not all tools bring in the entirety of ethics into consideration. There are ethical estimations of tools (think of them as potential ethical energy) that we can try to estimate. Syringe > Gun seems like one we can make. Gun vs Nuke, a bit harder due to the consideration of use vs threat of use. The loom alone is pretty neutral and is far more reflective of direct context, where the context of a gun or syringe generalizes easier. And of course these are all my calculations, and you and others can have different ones, but I think if we really decided to spend 8 hours nailing down this discussion, you would indeed see a loose tiering/ranking of tools and "potential ethical energy". I wouldn't be surprised to see other measures/categories emerge either such as severity, risk, and commonality of use case. The question becomes this: what is the "potential ethical energy" of AI. IMO it's very close to the loom in that the context matters the most, but there's also a severity of effect factor in play that makes it more dangerous. Still, I would say AI has an overall positive potential ethical energy.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  There is no such thing as an ethical potential energy it’s not even a useful thought experiment.
  - adjkant 8y ago
    > There is no such thing as an ethical potential energy Yes there is, I just made it up on the spot and defined it! If you mean that it is not a commonly discussed philosophical term then yes, you'd be correct. > It’s not even a useful thought experiment Now that's a discussion to bad had that you gave no evidence for its lack of use, while I used it to describe tools that humans use and how an "ethical potential energy" calculation can correlate to the practical effects of a tool, and perhaps how we should view/regulate/restrict said items in the context of humans. You could easily derive firearm laws from such a base if you chose to do so, for example. If that derivation is valid then depends on if the concept has the proper grounding in relation to ethics, which is again a discussion to be had.
pjc50 8y ago
This approach presumes that the ethical responsibility falls on the user of the tool, including the responsibility to see what the effects of use are. Where this starts to break down is autonomous systems - when the system itself makes decisions that could be considered to be ethical, or have significant social effects. Autonomous weapons are the usual example, from landmines to drones, but this also applies to systems making economic decisions. A gun is not something that can be held ethically responsible itself because it does not make decisions. An autonomous gun turret would be.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Because they do as these systems are designed and put into operation by humans and come with an off switch.
lukifer 8y ago
Though I agree in principle, I think tools can’t be considered in isolation, but rather in the context of iterated game theory. Is Instagram inherently evil? Obviously not; but through the lens of pre-existing human social dynamics, including status competition, mating drives, social signaling, etc, the capabilities introduced by that particular tool almost inevitably lead to the perverse incentives of lifestyle facades, “influencers”, Fyre Festival, etc. Do we have to do these things? Of course not. But it’s naive to not think about the “realpolitik” scenarios, and what could be done to mitigate them, rather than assuming perfectly ethical and rational actors. What makes AI even more complicated than previous technological changes to our game landscape, is the potential not for new tools, but for new players: at best, these artificial players are proxies for each of our interests (though see the side effects of “flash crashes” from high-frequency trading bots); at worst, we may have to contend with vastly intelligent new players with emergent interests of their own, which we can’t necessarily predict. While I don’t think it’s inconceivable that A.I. will always be subject to human understanding and control, we’re in such new territory that that’s fundamentally an assumption (see the arguments from Bostrom, etc).
- dogma1138 8y ago
  AI isn’t s player it’s as dumb as a rock. The players are still humans that build, maintain, operate and can switch it off.
  - adjkant 8y ago
    AI today is that dumb, but I think the parent comment is discussing a theoretical AGI nearing or possessing consciousness. A bit irrelevant for today's moral conversation on AI but a very interesting one down the line if we ever do get to that point.
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      Let’s have this talk in 3 centuries then.
  - coldtea 8y ago
wallace_f 8y ago
How do you not see the contradiction in writing about how no tools are inherently unethical, then say that one tool is inherently unethical because you are scared of it in particular?
- dogma1138 8y ago
  I’m not scared of any of it, I don’t think that neither guns nor AI are unethical, nor ethical I don’t anthropomorphize objects.
  - wallace_f 8y ago
    Sugar, pollution and cars are much more likely to kill you.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    OK, so you wouldn't be scared if we gave guns to everybody in your city except you. There are mere guns, they are not problematic in themselves, it's how people use them. No reason to think giving everybody in your city a gun would be any different in its outcome to you (and the city's wellbeing) than giving everybody a banana... /s
coldtea 8y ago
>AI is a tool, and while you can say some tools are easier to abuse than others it has not baring on their ethics since tools have no ethics to begin with. For one, that argument only holds for tools without conscience (e.g. a hammer or a headphone). AI, though, is precisely the kind of tool that can be capable to have ethics. Second, even dumb tools without ethics of their own, can be ethically problematic (e.g. a bomb).
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Tools cannot have ethics since tools do not define ethics, society does and ethics aren’t universal or static. We are barely capable of defining and arguing ethics as a society claiming that a microwave would be able to make ethical decisions is laughable. P.S. A bomb is no more ethically problematic than a bottle coke.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Tools cannot have ethics since tools do not define ethics, society does and ethics aren’t universal or static. Which is still beside the point. As I already wrote, an advanced AI is a tool that can precisely define ethics for itself or adopt ones. Plus, as I also already wrote, even if a tool has no ethics, it can be ethically problematic (to society), so that is something we should discuss too. >We are barely capable of defining and arguing ethics as a society claiming that a microwave would be able to make ethical decisions is laughable. Which is again irrelevant, as an AI is not a microwave -- and future AI even less so. We are capable of seeing/discussing even things that are not immediately in front of us...

adjkant 8y ago

> Is a gun less ethical than a syringe because it can be used for violence? A gun's purpose is to shoot bullets. A syringe has the purpose of delivering fluid into the human body. It's not hard to evaluate the ethics of the most common actions for each of those. While the tool itself technically has no ethics, owning or using the tool tends to have ethical implications. In a practical world, it is very fair to evaluate those implications, at least at an estimation level. Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of complexity when it comes to tools and ethics and no easy answers, and with the luddite example it brings in questions of work ethics and societal structure, so the loom doesn't exist in a vacuum. But not all tools bring in the entirety of ethics into consideration. There are ethical estimations of tools (think of them as potential ethical energy) that we can try to estimate. Syringe > Gun seems like one we can make. Gun vs Nuke, a bit harder due to the consideration of use vs threat of use. The loom alone is pretty neutral and is far more reflective of direct context, where the context of a gun or syringe generalizes easier. And of course these are all my calculations, and you and others can have different ones, but I think if we really decided to spend 8 hours nailing down this discussion, you would indeed see a loose tiering/ranking of tools and "potential ethical energy". I wouldn't be surprised to see other measures/categories emerge either such as severity, risk, and commonality of use case. The question becomes this: what is the "potential ethical energy" of AI. IMO it's very close to the loom in that the context matters the most, but there's also a severity of effect factor in play that makes it more dangerous. Still, I would say AI has an overall positive potential ethical energy.

dogma1138 8y ago
There is no such thing as an ethical potential energy it’s not even a useful thought experiment.
- adjkant 8y ago
  > There is no such thing as an ethical potential energy Yes there is, I just made it up on the spot and defined it! If you mean that it is not a commonly discussed philosophical term then yes, you'd be correct. > It’s not even a useful thought experiment Now that's a discussion to bad had that you gave no evidence for its lack of use, while I used it to describe tools that humans use and how an "ethical potential energy" calculation can correlate to the practical effects of a tool, and perhaps how we should view/regulate/restrict said items in the context of humans. You could easily derive firearm laws from such a base if you chose to do so, for example. If that derivation is valid then depends on if the concept has the proper grounding in relation to ethics, which is again a discussion to be had.

pjc50 8y ago

This approach presumes that the ethical responsibility falls on the user of the tool, including the responsibility to see what the effects of use are. Where this starts to break down is autonomous systems - when the system itself makes decisions that could be considered to be ethical, or have significant social effects. Autonomous weapons are the usual example, from landmines to drones, but this also applies to systems making economic decisions. A gun is not something that can be held ethically responsible itself because it does not make decisions. An autonomous gun turret would be.

dogma1138 8y ago
Because they do as these systems are designed and put into operation by humans and come with an off switch.

lukifer 8y ago

Though I agree in principle, I think tools can’t be considered in isolation, but rather in the context of iterated game theory. Is Instagram inherently evil? Obviously not; but through the lens of pre-existing human social dynamics, including status competition, mating drives, social signaling, etc, the capabilities introduced by that particular tool almost inevitably lead to the perverse incentives of lifestyle facades, “influencers”, Fyre Festival, etc. Do we have to do these things? Of course not. But it’s naive to not think about the “realpolitik” scenarios, and what could be done to mitigate them, rather than assuming perfectly ethical and rational actors. What makes AI even more complicated than previous technological changes to our game landscape, is the potential not for new tools, but for new players: at best, these artificial players are proxies for each of our interests (though see the side effects of “flash crashes” from high-frequency trading bots); at worst, we may have to contend with vastly intelligent new players with emergent interests of their own, which we can’t necessarily predict. While I don’t think it’s inconceivable that A.I. will always be subject to human understanding and control, we’re in such new territory that that’s fundamentally an assumption (see the arguments from Bostrom, etc).

dogma1138 8y ago
AI isn’t s player it’s as dumb as a rock. The players are still humans that build, maintain, operate and can switch it off.
- adjkant 8y ago
  AI today is that dumb, but I think the parent comment is discussing a theoretical AGI nearing or possessing consciousness. A bit irrelevant for today's moral conversation on AI but a very interesting one down the line if we ever do get to that point.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    Let’s have this talk in 3 centuries then.
- coldtea 8y ago

wallace_f 8y ago

How do you not see the contradiction in writing about how no tools are inherently unethical, then say that one tool is inherently unethical because you are scared of it in particular?

dogma1138 8y ago
I’m not scared of any of it, I don’t think that neither guns nor AI are unethical, nor ethical I don’t anthropomorphize objects.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Sugar, pollution and cars are much more likely to kill you.
- coldtea 8y ago
  OK, so you wouldn't be scared if we gave guns to everybody in your city except you. There are mere guns, they are not problematic in themselves, it's how people use them. No reason to think giving everybody in your city a gun would be any different in its outcome to you (and the city's wellbeing) than giving everybody a banana... /s

coldtea 8y ago

>AI is a tool, and while you can say some tools are easier to abuse than others it has not baring on their ethics since tools have no ethics to begin with. For one, that argument only holds for tools without conscience (e.g. a hammer or a headphone). AI, though, is precisely the kind of tool that can be capable to have ethics. Second, even dumb tools without ethics of their own, can be ethically problematic (e.g. a bomb).

dogma1138 8y ago
Tools cannot have ethics since tools do not define ethics, society does and ethics aren’t universal or static. We are barely capable of defining and arguing ethics as a society claiming that a microwave would be able to make ethical decisions is laughable. P.S. A bomb is no more ethically problematic than a bottle coke.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Tools cannot have ethics since tools do not define ethics, society does and ethics aren’t universal or static. Which is still beside the point. As I already wrote, an advanced AI is a tool that can precisely define ethics for itself or adopt ones. Plus, as I also already wrote, even if a tool has no ethics, it can be ethically problematic (to society), so that is something we should discuss too. >We are barely capable of defining and arguing ethics as a society claiming that a microwave would be able to make ethical decisions is laughable. Which is again irrelevant, as an AI is not a microwave -- and future AI even less so. We are capable of seeing/discussing even things that are not immediately in front of us...