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Really, or is it just about where you'd place the Overton window? Should they include a white supremacist, pedophile, human extinction advocate, etc? If so you'

Really, or is it just about where you'd place the Overton window? Should they include a white supremacist, pedophile, human extinction advocate, etc? If so you're being consistent. If not where would you draw the line? By the popularity of the ideology?

solotronics 8y ago
If you don't include people you disagree with politically they will go off and form their own group independent of yours. I can imagine the defense contractors banding together and making a new Manhattan Project for general AI. Wouldn't it be better to have an ethics board that includes all the big players?
- gowld 8y ago
  Either they'd do that anyway when they didn't get whichever killbot they wanted, or else they'd convince you to build the killbot you wanted, and in either case you end up with the killbots you don't want, so inviting them to your ethics board doesn't help. The defense contractors haven't invited you to their ethics board.
- sgt101 8y ago
  Darpa are keenly looking at this. They have to because its important that such advances would change the strategic situation. But, let's be honest, it's science fiction. There is no prospect of aig at all in our life times.
naasking 8y ago
There might be a few criteria. Some balance of representative of the population, internal and factual consistency, perhaps even length of the tradition. That is, a candidate wouldn't have to have all of these, but satisfy at least some of them to some extent. I think would exclude the most objectionable, but you have to allow for the fact that it will include prominent beliefs that you won't like. Sorry, most of humanity literally doesn't share your point of view on many topics. Nor should such a council endeavour to create an echo chamber.
- mike00632 8y ago
  >Nor should such a council endeavour to create an echo chamber. But if you create a council and staff it with viewpoints that only serve to ignorantly speak in favor of tradition and cultural norms then haven't you just created an echo chamber?
  - naasking 8y ago
    Sure, if you accept your qualifier of "only". I see no reason to though.
pdonis 8y ago
> Should they include a white supremacist, pedophile, human extinction advocate, etc? In an ethics discussion? Short answer? Yes. Otherwise how can you be sure that their beliefs don't have some merit? Remember that "sure" here means "sure enough to bet the entire future of the human race on it", because that's what's at stake with AI ethics (unless it turns out that AI is impossible, which I don't think is likely and in any case I wouldn't want to bet on it). No human being knows enough about ethics to be able to rule out any viewpoint with that level of confidence.
bigj0n 8y ago
I think that you should hear them out and they would be very easy to dismiss very quickly. The reason we dont agree with White supremacists isnt that we've effectively suppressed their speech. It's that they're wrong and it's simple to see.
- woodruffw 8y ago
  This is something that continues to confuse me: what distinction do you draw between "not hearing out" and "dismissing very quickly"? It's not like none of us know what a white supremacist is -- we've all seen their rhetoric, have dismissed it, and no longer feel inclined to re-litigate the issue. Put another way: you wouldn't, presumably, ask a physicist to critically re-evaluate the laws of thermodynamics each time they perform a calculation. Why are you holding ethicists to a higher (and progress-impeding) standard?
  - elliekelly 8y ago
    This is going to sound silly but I think there is pretty substantial value in making the white supremacist feel _heard_ and then feel dismissed. How do you feel when someone brushes off your opinion as invalid before you've even had a chance to express it? Like the person brushing you off is obviously an idiot who can't be reasoned with. But if someone has taken the time to discuss something with you and really hear you out and then they dismiss your opinion? Then you're probably a little more open to thinking through the merits of why they disagree. I'm not sure how to strike that balance and I completely understand that it feels both distasteful and inefficient to "re-litigate" things like white supremacy when the correct outcome is obvious to us but I think the negative effects of "echo chambers" are exacerbated by how quickly their views are dismissed before they've been given a chance to explain themselves. In denying them the opportunity to express their views we're not only solidifying their views but denying them the opportunity to examine their views critically.
    - woodruffw 8y ago
      That doesn't sound silly at all to me. You bring up a very good point. However, I also think you give the white supremacist too much credit. He wants to be heard, but he isn't a faithful member of the conversation. He can't feel dismissed to, because (from his perspective) it's nobody's place to dismiss to him. His goals are simple: (1) to keep people talking about white supremacy, (2) to frame his removal from the conversation as a violation of the principles that he himself seeks to undermine, and (3) to recruit more people into white supremacy via (1) and (2). He's a door-to-door salesman for hate: he's here to sell you something, not to critically examine his views. He knows that conversations with him won't work, and that's exactly why he wants us to think that he's worth conversing with. Edit: I'm not going to modify what I wrote above, but I want to condition it a bit. I should really have said that he isn't always a faithful member of the conversation. When he is, all of your points apply. My overwhelming concern is that we give him the benefit of the doubt too frequently.

solotronics 8y ago

If you don't include people you disagree with politically they will go off and form their own group independent of yours. I can imagine the defense contractors banding together and making a new Manhattan Project for general AI. Wouldn't it be better to have an ethics board that includes all the big players?

gowld 8y ago
Either they'd do that anyway when they didn't get whichever killbot they wanted, or else they'd convince you to build the killbot you wanted, and in either case you end up with the killbots you don't want, so inviting them to your ethics board doesn't help. The defense contractors haven't invited you to their ethics board.
sgt101 8y ago
Darpa are keenly looking at this. They have to because its important that such advances would change the strategic situation. But, let's be honest, it's science fiction. There is no prospect of aig at all in our life times.

naasking 8y ago

There might be a few criteria. Some balance of representative of the population, internal and factual consistency, perhaps even length of the tradition. That is, a candidate wouldn't have to have all of these, but satisfy at least some of them to some extent. I think would exclude the most objectionable, but you have to allow for the fact that it will include prominent beliefs that you won't like. Sorry, most of humanity literally doesn't share your point of view on many topics. Nor should such a council endeavour to create an echo chamber.

mike00632 8y ago
>Nor should such a council endeavour to create an echo chamber. But if you create a council and staff it with viewpoints that only serve to ignorantly speak in favor of tradition and cultural norms then haven't you just created an echo chamber?
- naasking 8y ago
  Sure, if you accept your qualifier of "only". I see no reason to though.

pdonis 8y ago

> Should they include a white supremacist, pedophile, human extinction advocate, etc? In an ethics discussion? Short answer? Yes. Otherwise how can you be sure that their beliefs don't have some merit? Remember that "sure" here means "sure enough to bet the entire future of the human race on it", because that's what's at stake with AI ethics (unless it turns out that AI is impossible, which I don't think is likely and in any case I wouldn't want to bet on it). No human being knows enough about ethics to be able to rule out any viewpoint with that level of confidence.

bigj0n 8y ago

I think that you should hear them out and they would be very easy to dismiss very quickly. The reason we dont agree with White supremacists isnt that we've effectively suppressed their speech. It's that they're wrong and it's simple to see.

woodruffw 8y ago
This is something that continues to confuse me: what distinction do you draw between "not hearing out" and "dismissing very quickly"? It's not like none of us know what a white supremacist is -- we've all seen their rhetoric, have dismissed it, and no longer feel inclined to re-litigate the issue. Put another way: you wouldn't, presumably, ask a physicist to critically re-evaluate the laws of thermodynamics each time they perform a calculation. Why are you holding ethicists to a higher (and progress-impeding) standard?
- elliekelly 8y ago
  This is going to sound silly but I think there is pretty substantial value in making the white supremacist feel _heard_ and then feel dismissed. How do you feel when someone brushes off your opinion as invalid before you've even had a chance to express it? Like the person brushing you off is obviously an idiot who can't be reasoned with. But if someone has taken the time to discuss something with you and really hear you out and then they dismiss your opinion? Then you're probably a little more open to thinking through the merits of why they disagree. I'm not sure how to strike that balance and I completely understand that it feels both distasteful and inefficient to "re-litigate" things like white supremacy when the correct outcome is obvious to us but I think the negative effects of "echo chambers" are exacerbated by how quickly their views are dismissed before they've been given a chance to explain themselves. In denying them the opportunity to express their views we're not only solidifying their views but denying them the opportunity to examine their views critically.
  - woodruffw 8y ago
    That doesn't sound silly at all to me. You bring up a very good point. However, I also think you give the white supremacist too much credit. He wants to be heard, but he isn't a faithful member of the conversation. He can't feel dismissed to, because (from his perspective) it's nobody's place to dismiss to him. His goals are simple: (1) to keep people talking about white supremacy, (2) to frame his removal from the conversation as a violation of the principles that he himself seeks to undermine, and (3) to recruit more people into white supremacy via (1) and (2). He's a door-to-door salesman for hate: he's here to sell you something, not to critically examine his views. He knows that conversations with him won't work, and that's exactly why he wants us to think that he's worth conversing with. Edit: I'm not going to modify what I wrote above, but I want to condition it a bit. I should really have said that he isn't always a faithful member of the conversation. When he is, all of your points apply. My overwhelming concern is that we give him the benefit of the doubt too frequently.