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In all irony it will possibly be our quest to impart our understanding of “ethics” to the AI which will ultimately lead to making it evil, as very few people se

In all irony it will possibly be our quest to impart our understanding of “ethics” to the AI which will ultimately lead to making it evil, as very few people seem to understand that ethics is completely flawed because it is culturally biased and requires a great deal of contextual understanding. It’s more of a political voodoo than a calculation

jonathanstrange 7y ago
> very few people seem to understand that ethics is completely flawed because it is culturally biased and requires a great deal of contextual understanding Do you have any particular ethics in mind? There is a vast range of positions, almost any position that can coherently be defended has been defended by one author or another. Some of them are by definition not culturally biased, for example many forms of utilitarianism, whereas others are strongly emphasizing that ethics requires a great deal of contextual understanding, for example Dancy's particularism. I just wonder why you address these particular points, because it's more common to hear the opposite criticisms, that ethics is unable to provide any sensible guideline because there is too much persistent disagreement between ethicists (Mackie's error theory), or because contemporary ethics is too relativist.
- suifbwish 7y ago
  Your first sentence demonstrated my point about ethics being flawed. Do I have any particular ethics in mind? No. All ethics is flawed for exactly the reasons you are stating. It’s relative, contextual and has many meanings so is thus impossible to have any universal context.
coffeefirst 7y ago
Correct. I disagree that its voodoo but it's probably impossible to encode into an AI. The "ethical" way to approach this technology is with failsafes and human supervision that can gracefully handle cases when it screws up. Instead, people are preparing to role this junk out at a scale that it's impossible to give it human supervision, and will then use that scale as an excuse to not give it human supervision.

jonathanstrange 7y ago

> very few people seem to understand that ethics is completely flawed because it is culturally biased and requires a great deal of contextual understanding Do you have any particular ethics in mind? There is a vast range of positions, almost any position that can coherently be defended has been defended by one author or another. Some of them are by definition not culturally biased, for example many forms of utilitarianism, whereas others are strongly emphasizing that ethics requires a great deal of contextual understanding, for example Dancy's particularism. I just wonder why you address these particular points, because it's more common to hear the opposite criticisms, that ethics is unable to provide any sensible guideline because there is too much persistent disagreement between ethicists (Mackie's error theory), or because contemporary ethics is too relativist.

suifbwish 7y ago
Your first sentence demonstrated my point about ethics being flawed. Do I have any particular ethics in mind? No. All ethics is flawed for exactly the reasons you are stating. It’s relative, contextual and has many meanings so is thus impossible to have any universal context.

coffeefirst 7y ago

Correct. I disagree that its voodoo but it's probably impossible to encode into an AI. The "ethical" way to approach this technology is with failsafes and human supervision that can gracefully handle cases when it screws up. Instead, people are preparing to role this junk out at a scale that it's impossible to give it human supervision, and will then use that scale as an excuse to not give it human supervision.