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I would trust an ai ethicist with a PhD in philosophy or ethics of their ideas were coherent. Tech backgrounds are not necessarily required.

Proven 8y ago
Why? The other day HN had a link to a research paper that showed ethicists don’t behave more morally than average Joe.
telltruth 8y ago
The big problem is that these people don't understand what current tech really is. The media and Musk have hyped this up as "AI" but it's not even remotely AI. These people go around and present slides as if sky is falling and induce massive FUD in general public. There is no real AI as far as anyone technical is concerned. So whole deal about "AI Ethics" is great way to get on AI train and get massive salaries for non-technical people. There are few things were policy is needed like surveillance and detecting model bias - but these are very few things and they do need awareness of actual capabilities and understanding of tech.
- Krasnol 8y ago
  Well, that's the reason why such a board shouldn't consist of non-tech people only. But if the tech people can't explain to the philosophers etc. what the current and future state of tech is so those can form an educated opinion on it than it's a pretty bad situation. I don't want to let the tech bubble decide on ethical questions. They failed spectacular on it in the last decade already and with ML tools becoming more and more popular, the range of misuse is growing also.
- matt4077 8y ago
  The central example of AI ethics is a self-driving car deciding whom to run over. That example is perfectly possible to occure even with today’s technology. I don’t know what this continuation of playing-chess-doesn’t-take-Intelligence griping is supposed to accomplish, except as posturing of people conflating perpetual contrarianism with insight.
  - michaelt 8y ago
    See, that exact example is why I look askew at a lot of the field of 'AI ethics' I mean, human drivers' education doesn't cover choosing who to kill in unavoidable crashes. Isn't that because we believe crashes where the driver can't avoid the crash, but can choose who to kill, are so rare as to be negligible? IMHO much more realistic and pressing AI ethics questions surround e.g. neural networks for setting insurance prices, and whether they can be shown not to discriminate against protected groups.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      > I mean, human drivers' education doesn't cover choosing who to kill in unavoidable crashes. Isn't that because we believe crashes where the driver can't avoid the crash, but can choose who to kill, are so rare as to be negligible? I'd look at a few other reasons: - We don't have "driving ethics" classes at all. Human driving education covers how to drive. "AI ethics" might cover many things, but I don't think "how to drive" is on that list. That topic falls under "AI", not "AI ethics". - The usual example you hear about is an AI driver choosing whether to kill a pedestrian or the driver. There is no point in having a "driving ethics for humans" class which teaches that it is your moral duty to kill yourself in order to avoid killing a pedestrian. No one would pay attention to that, and people would rightly attack the class itself as being a moral abomination. This example actually makes me more sympathetic to the traditional view that (e.g. for Catholics) suicide is a mortal sin, or (for legalists) suicide should be illegal. This has perverse consequences, like assuring the grieving family that at least their loved one is burning in hell, or subjecting failed suicides to legal penalties. But as a cultural practice, it immunizes everyone against those who would tell them to kill themselves.
    - matt4077 8y ago
      The reason we don’t teach humans is that they are unlikely to have the capacity to make and execute such decisions in a split seconds. Computers do.
    - DebtDeflation 8y ago
      > See, that exact example is why I look askew at a lot of the field of 'AI ethics' The main focus of "AI ethics" needs to be on model bias and how to counter it through transparency and governance. More and more decisions, from mortgage applications to job applications are being automated based on the output of some machine learning model. The person being "scored" has no insight into how they were scored, often has no recourse to appeal the decision, and in many cases isn't even aware that they were scored by a model in the first place. THIS is what AI Ethics needs to focus on, not navel gazing about who self-driving cars should choose to kill or how to implement kill switches for runaway robots.
- tastroder 8y ago
  Where is this "these people" narrative coming from in this thread? While I get the controversy about that particular board member, the others seemed to be accomplished researchers and include people with pretty technical backgrounds. Archive link to the short bios, since Google seems to have taken the document down: https://web.archive.org/web/20190331195013/https://ai.google/static/documents/2019-google-advanced-technology-external-advisory-council.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20190331195013/https://ai.google...
- soup10 8y ago
  i mean we have super fast and accurate image processing now. doesn't take a genius to realize that its possible to use that technology to aim and manipulate weapons
- birksherty 8y ago
  Why should only tech people decide our lives? They don't have any ethics as we have seen in american companies like Google and fb. They only care about money. These companies definitely needed some people outside their tech bubble long time ago. Tech people can design the tech. But here we are talking about the impact and those people should not be the one deciding everything. They are doing that over a decade and disappointed.
  - rixed 8y ago
    > Why should only tech people decide our lives? They don't have any ethics as we have seen in american companies like Google and fb. They only care about money. Tech companies are not made only of tech people. Those companies you named employ many engineers but are led, like any other company, by finance, sales and management. This whole story is actually about a conflict between the rank engineers and the management (similar to the earlier conflict about military projects). You should totally trust the tech people, as they are the ones who are not in for the money (or less likely to be just in for the money, at least). Actually, the whole story of Google not being trustworthy any longer might just be the story of engineering being slowly overruled by finance/management there. I would totally trust Google AI researchers, like i would totally trust Einstein with the fussion theory. That employees were still able to overthrow a comitee formed by upper management will achieve more than whatever little benefit this comitee would have achieved.
DebtDeflation 8y ago
>I would trust an ai ethicist with a PhD in philosophy or ethics of their ideas were coherent. Tech backgrounds are not necessarily required. I agree, it doesn't require technical AI skills but I would expect a person in this position to have SOMETHING relevant in their background that they could point to as a qualifier. Honestly, I read the article and it left me feeling quite sympathetic to this lady. It seemed like another clear cut case of political correctness run amok. Then I looked up her bio online and found she has a Bachelors degree in Education from the Hampton Institute and her entire career has consisted of a series of political appointments the highlights of which include Director of the Office of Personnel Management (despite not having any HR related background) and the Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Services (despite not having any public health background). She has neither training nor experience in either AI or Ethics. Politics aside, she was not even remotely qualified to be on an AI Ethics Board for Google.
fixermark 8y ago
I'd actually push this thought one step further: most tech degrees require between zero and one course of ethics over a full college program. The people we trust to make the technical decisions are under-trained in making those decisions with an eye towards ethical questions, and we're in a time where ethics should be ahead of the technology. Many successful teams in history included members who were not technically skilled, but had an implementable vision. The gap in knowledge bridgeable, and the alternative is more "Facebook is involuntarily committing users to an experiment in what makes people sad" ethical errors.

Proven 8y ago

Why? The other day HN had a link to a research paper that showed ethicists don’t behave more morally than average Joe.

telltruth 8y ago

The big problem is that these people don't understand what current tech really is. The media and Musk have hyped this up as "AI" but it's not even remotely AI. These people go around and present slides as if sky is falling and induce massive FUD in general public. There is no real AI as far as anyone technical is concerned. So whole deal about "AI Ethics" is great way to get on AI train and get massive salaries for non-technical people. There are few things were policy is needed like surveillance and detecting model bias - but these are very few things and they do need awareness of actual capabilities and understanding of tech.

Krasnol 8y ago
Well, that's the reason why such a board shouldn't consist of non-tech people only. But if the tech people can't explain to the philosophers etc. what the current and future state of tech is so those can form an educated opinion on it than it's a pretty bad situation. I don't want to let the tech bubble decide on ethical questions. They failed spectacular on it in the last decade already and with ML tools becoming more and more popular, the range of misuse is growing also.
matt4077 8y ago
The central example of AI ethics is a self-driving car deciding whom to run over. That example is perfectly possible to occure even with today’s technology. I don’t know what this continuation of playing-chess-doesn’t-take-Intelligence griping is supposed to accomplish, except as posturing of people conflating perpetual contrarianism with insight.
- michaelt 8y ago
  See, that exact example is why I look askew at a lot of the field of 'AI ethics' I mean, human drivers' education doesn't cover choosing who to kill in unavoidable crashes. Isn't that because we believe crashes where the driver can't avoid the crash, but can choose who to kill, are so rare as to be negligible? IMHO much more realistic and pressing AI ethics questions surround e.g. neural networks for setting insurance prices, and whether they can be shown not to discriminate against protected groups.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > I mean, human drivers' education doesn't cover choosing who to kill in unavoidable crashes. Isn't that because we believe crashes where the driver can't avoid the crash, but can choose who to kill, are so rare as to be negligible? I'd look at a few other reasons: - We don't have "driving ethics" classes at all. Human driving education covers how to drive. "AI ethics" might cover many things, but I don't think "how to drive" is on that list. That topic falls under "AI", not "AI ethics". - The usual example you hear about is an AI driver choosing whether to kill a pedestrian or the driver. There is no point in having a "driving ethics for humans" class which teaches that it is your moral duty to kill yourself in order to avoid killing a pedestrian. No one would pay attention to that, and people would rightly attack the class itself as being a moral abomination. This example actually makes me more sympathetic to the traditional view that (e.g. for Catholics) suicide is a mortal sin, or (for legalists) suicide should be illegal. This has perverse consequences, like assuring the grieving family that at least their loved one is burning in hell, or subjecting failed suicides to legal penalties. But as a cultural practice, it immunizes everyone against those who would tell them to kill themselves.
  - matt4077 8y ago
    The reason we don’t teach humans is that they are unlikely to have the capacity to make and execute such decisions in a split seconds. Computers do.
  - DebtDeflation 8y ago
    > See, that exact example is why I look askew at a lot of the field of 'AI ethics' The main focus of "AI ethics" needs to be on model bias and how to counter it through transparency and governance. More and more decisions, from mortgage applications to job applications are being automated based on the output of some machine learning model. The person being "scored" has no insight into how they were scored, often has no recourse to appeal the decision, and in many cases isn't even aware that they were scored by a model in the first place. THIS is what AI Ethics needs to focus on, not navel gazing about who self-driving cars should choose to kill or how to implement kill switches for runaway robots.
tastroder 8y ago
Where is this "these people" narrative coming from in this thread? While I get the controversy about that particular board member, the others seemed to be accomplished researchers and include people with pretty technical backgrounds. Archive link to the short bios, since Google seems to have taken the document down: https://web.archive.org/web/20190331195013/https://ai.google/static/documents/2019-google-advanced-technology-external-advisory-council.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20190331195013/https://ai.google...
soup10 8y ago
i mean we have super fast and accurate image processing now. doesn't take a genius to realize that its possible to use that technology to aim and manipulate weapons
birksherty 8y ago
Why should only tech people decide our lives? They don't have any ethics as we have seen in american companies like Google and fb. They only care about money. These companies definitely needed some people outside their tech bubble long time ago. Tech people can design the tech. But here we are talking about the impact and those people should not be the one deciding everything. They are doing that over a decade and disappointed.
- rixed 8y ago
  > Why should only tech people decide our lives? They don't have any ethics as we have seen in american companies like Google and fb. They only care about money. Tech companies are not made only of tech people. Those companies you named employ many engineers but are led, like any other company, by finance, sales and management. This whole story is actually about a conflict between the rank engineers and the management (similar to the earlier conflict about military projects). You should totally trust the tech people, as they are the ones who are not in for the money (or less likely to be just in for the money, at least). Actually, the whole story of Google not being trustworthy any longer might just be the story of engineering being slowly overruled by finance/management there. I would totally trust Google AI researchers, like i would totally trust Einstein with the fussion theory. That employees were still able to overthrow a comitee formed by upper management will achieve more than whatever little benefit this comitee would have achieved.

DebtDeflation 8y ago

>I would trust an ai ethicist with a PhD in philosophy or ethics of their ideas were coherent. Tech backgrounds are not necessarily required. I agree, it doesn't require technical AI skills but I would expect a person in this position to have SOMETHING relevant in their background that they could point to as a qualifier. Honestly, I read the article and it left me feeling quite sympathetic to this lady. It seemed like another clear cut case of political correctness run amok. Then I looked up her bio online and found she has a Bachelors degree in Education from the Hampton Institute and her entire career has consisted of a series of political appointments the highlights of which include Director of the Office of Personnel Management (despite not having any HR related background) and the Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Services (despite not having any public health background). She has neither training nor experience in either AI or Ethics. Politics aside, she was not even remotely qualified to be on an AI Ethics Board for Google.

fixermark 8y ago

I'd actually push this thought one step further: most tech degrees require between zero and one course of ethics over a full college program. The people we trust to make the technical decisions are under-trained in making those decisions with an eye towards ethical questions, and we're in a time where ethics should be ahead of the technology. Many successful teams in history included members who were not technically skilled, but had an implementable vision. The gap in knowledge bridgeable, and the alternative is more "Facebook is involuntarily committing users to an experiment in what makes people sad" ethical errors.