6 ms·

Yet murder is a punishable offense and people seem just fine with that. The law is an accepted and used set of actions that are considered bad, with associated

Yet murder is a punishable offense and people seem just fine with that. The law is an accepted and used set of actions that are considered bad, with associated repercussions. It's a best effort and it _works_. Why would AI have to reinvent the wheel here?

pixl97 8y ago
Great, murder is one tiny issue in the huge ethical problem space, and probably the simplest as dead and not dead is pretty binary. Now define suffering algorithmically.
- lemagedurage 8y ago
  Well there's laws that to about hurting people
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
Murder is the taking of a life in a manner/context which is considered bad by definition. If you consider there are many situations where the taking of a life is considered politically or economically expedient, ethically justified, or a social or cultural necessity, the ethics of life-taking become a lot less straightforward. One of the greatest potential benefits of AI is that having to define our ethics explicitly, instead of wrapping them up in layers of propaganda, manipulation, and self-serving lies, has the potential to transform society. It's currently a very remote potential, but it does exist.
- lemagedurage 8y ago
  In Holland we have a law which states that you can drink a maximum amount of alcohol before driving. This amount is based on research of how the alcohol concentration affects a human's ability to do things like driving. This is a sensible approach. How could AI ever reach such a specific conclusion?
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Using statistics and efficiency measures alone is enough to derive this conclusion. (Albeit it might derive that having almost any BAC is bad, error rate of sensors notwithstanding.) Utilitarian not deontological but result is the same.
CM30 8y ago
Well, most moral philosophies usually hold some very basic things as wrong, murder and stealing being among them. However, the issue is that it's very culturally dependent on WHY it's seen as wrong, and it's the reason behind WHY something is seen as wrong that the more complex elements of ethics are built on. A utilitarian vs a deontologist vs a virtue theorist vs a follower of almost any religion vs a supporter of god knows how many other moral theories I don't know about would all have a different answer to that, and different answers to which cases killing or stealing or anything else might potentially be justified/right. And you can see that reflected in legal systems of different countries right now. Some countries have self defence as basically 'anything is permissible if they're intruding on your property' where some have it so you need to use reasonable force. Some countries consider it fair to let the government kill criminals via the death penalty, and others don't. The difficulty isn't defining whether murder or theft or what not in its most blatant forms is wrong, since most ethical frameworks will state it is. It's trying to define the many, many edge cases that people don't agree on, and which many countries/states/societies take different approaches to.
- lemagedurage 8y ago
  This however seems more of a problem in philosophy than in governments. AI can cover the laws of the country in which it runs. The laws define the edge cases more more thoroughly than any philosophical school of thought. It raises questions like If we can derive morality from first principles, why hasn't someone applied this to the legal system yet? If we can't derive morality from first principles, why would we need to invent that for world changing technology to happen? Wouldn't it be a lot more in line with the population's sense of morality to train the AI based on our current laws than on some generalizing philosophical view?
  - CM30 8y ago
    Well it depends how the AI operates, is distributed, etc. Any AI that affects people and populations in multiple regions will need to adapt to the laws in those different regions. Which could mean a lot of extra complexity, even if you limited it just to the US. You can't assume the same AI setup that'd work fine in the US would work in the UK or vice versa, because the laws aren't consistent about many elements. Either way, it's still a complicated thing to figure out.
lakis 8y ago
No it's not. There are cases where taking a human life is considered acceptable and ethical. Killing an abductor that threatens to kill many people and negotiations have failed is considered ethical and not punishable by law. Now if you assume that murder is the case where an unlawful act happened then you've stopped querying for ethics and your question becomes what is lawful which is again extremely ill-defined.
- lemagedurage 8y ago
  Which is also handled by the legal system already. Instead of going back to the drawing board, people should continue with the huge work on morality defined as rules which is the legal system.

pixl97 8y ago

Great, murder is one tiny issue in the huge ethical problem space, and probably the simplest as dead and not dead is pretty binary. Now define suffering algorithmically.

lemagedurage 8y ago
Well there's laws that to about hurting people

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

Murder is the taking of a life in a manner/context which is considered bad by definition. If you consider there are many situations where the taking of a life is considered politically or economically expedient, ethically justified, or a social or cultural necessity, the ethics of life-taking become a lot less straightforward. One of the greatest potential benefits of AI is that having to define our ethics explicitly, instead of wrapping them up in layers of propaganda, manipulation, and self-serving lies, has the potential to transform society. It's currently a very remote potential, but it does exist.

lemagedurage 8y ago
In Holland we have a law which states that you can drink a maximum amount of alcohol before driving. This amount is based on research of how the alcohol concentration affects a human's ability to do things like driving. This is a sensible approach. How could AI ever reach such a specific conclusion?
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Using statistics and efficiency measures alone is enough to derive this conclusion. (Albeit it might derive that having almost any BAC is bad, error rate of sensors notwithstanding.) Utilitarian not deontological but result is the same.

CM30 8y ago

Well, most moral philosophies usually hold some very basic things as wrong, murder and stealing being among them. However, the issue is that it's very culturally dependent on WHY it's seen as wrong, and it's the reason behind WHY something is seen as wrong that the more complex elements of ethics are built on. A utilitarian vs a deontologist vs a virtue theorist vs a follower of almost any religion vs a supporter of god knows how many other moral theories I don't know about would all have a different answer to that, and different answers to which cases killing or stealing or anything else might potentially be justified/right. And you can see that reflected in legal systems of different countries right now. Some countries have self defence as basically 'anything is permissible if they're intruding on your property' where some have it so you need to use reasonable force. Some countries consider it fair to let the government kill criminals via the death penalty, and others don't. The difficulty isn't defining whether murder or theft or what not in its most blatant forms is wrong, since most ethical frameworks will state it is. It's trying to define the many, many edge cases that people don't agree on, and which many countries/states/societies take different approaches to.

lemagedurage 8y ago
This however seems more of a problem in philosophy than in governments. AI can cover the laws of the country in which it runs. The laws define the edge cases more more thoroughly than any philosophical school of thought. It raises questions like If we can derive morality from first principles, why hasn't someone applied this to the legal system yet? If we can't derive morality from first principles, why would we need to invent that for world changing technology to happen? Wouldn't it be a lot more in line with the population's sense of morality to train the AI based on our current laws than on some generalizing philosophical view?
- CM30 8y ago
  Well it depends how the AI operates, is distributed, etc. Any AI that affects people and populations in multiple regions will need to adapt to the laws in those different regions. Which could mean a lot of extra complexity, even if you limited it just to the US. You can't assume the same AI setup that'd work fine in the US would work in the UK or vice versa, because the laws aren't consistent about many elements. Either way, it's still a complicated thing to figure out.

lakis 8y ago

No it's not. There are cases where taking a human life is considered acceptable and ethical. Killing an abductor that threatens to kill many people and negotiations have failed is considered ethical and not punishable by law. Now if you assume that murder is the case where an unlawful act happened then you've stopped querying for ethics and your question becomes what is lawful which is again extremely ill-defined.

lemagedurage 8y ago
Which is also handled by the legal system already. Instead of going back to the drawing board, people should continue with the huge work on morality defined as rules which is the legal system.