6 ms·

Thinking through the consequences of this type of technology is important, but the narrative of "we can no longer allow technology X to go unregulated" as a vag

by ling3 5y ago

Thinking through the consequences of this type of technology is important, but the narrative of "we can no longer allow technology X to go unregulated" as a vague catch-all for every negative externality is unhelpful. Regulate how? What concrete solutions is the author suggesting?

dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
The author is not writing down action items after a meeting. It's the job of politicians (presumably) to draft up policy. Activism groups also push for specific regulation sometimes. But stating your policy opens up another angle of attack: those who wish to undermine your ideas can attack your implementation rather than the concept.
- pc86 5y ago
  It's at best sloppy to just say "this needs to be regulated, but I can't be bothered to suggest even one possible regulation that would fix anything I find so objectionable." The author has a doctorate and works at Microsoft Research on AI. If she thinks it should be regulated (which is absolutely a fair position to take) I'd much rather have her be the one suggesting regulations than some 80 year old lawyer who's been in Congress since the civil rights era or some special interest lobbyist.
  - dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
    Her understanding of AI does not translate to an understanding of how a society runs or how laws should be made. If anything, many people overgeneralize their expertise at one task to suggest bad solutions to problems from other domains. Especially engineers and PhDs. I agree that she's still better than most US politicians. I have some faith in politicians from Western Europe to do half the correct thing, or at least not be swayed by arguments coming from money too much. Not that much faith, but still..
    - PeterisP 5y ago
      If someone wants to make an argument "this needs to be regulated" then they need to assert that the benefits of doing so outweigh the drawbacks. The article does not really do that; it points out a class of potential harm, but it does not try to present an reasonable argument that regulation is likely to succeed in preventing that harm; and the balance of pros vs cons can't even be discussed without at least some general idea about what kind of regulation we're talking about.
- Verdex 5y ago
  > those who wish to undermine your ideas can attack your implementation rather than the concept. Yeah, it's frustrating when people do this. But if you want to have real solution at the end of the day, then you'll need to hammer out all of your implementation issues. If you produce an implementation that is flawed, then people will be able to evade the spirit of your regulation rendering it useless.
CivBase 5y ago
Agreed. What even counts as "AI that interprets human emotions"? Is a suggestion algorithm designed to maximize clicks "interpreting human emotions"?
- Verdex 5y ago
  I find this to be an interesting statement. What happens if you're able to evade regulation by making your "AI that interprets human emotions" of really poor quality. "Your honor, we investigated the source code and discovered that there was technically no AI being utilized. It was a poorly formatted series of if-statements. Honestly, I wouldn't even consider this a program. How it avoids crashing the moment it's run is beyond me." Like, does AI mean some statistical method is used? That large data sets were used? Are you using some declarative language like prolog? Ultimately the only definition I can see them coming to will reduce to "person uses computer to do thing I don't like." And somehow I don't think that's going to actually help.
Hizonner 5y ago
Well, I suggest an outright total ban on anything that purports to read people's emotions. Either it doesn't work, in which case it shouldn't be used, or it does work, in which case it shouldn't be used.
- Verdex 5y ago
  People can read other people's emotions. You can build a mechanical turk program that's effectively the same as having a personal concierge agent with respect to the regulation. Like, if you ban reading people's emotions you effectively have to also ban any human interaction.
  - Hizonner 5y ago
    It's still completely reasonable to ban automating it. The impact of having it done in an automated way is completely different from the impact of having it done on a person-to-person basis, for a lot of reasons, starting with scale. It's also reasonable to ban anything that claims to be better at it than a human.
    - Verdex 5y ago
      I don't think it's completely reasonable to ban it. Although, I would agree that it's completely reasonable to restrict nearly anything. Although, I do like your comment about scale. If you have a system that's 99% successful, then if you apply it to everyone in the US then you're failing 3 million people. That's a problem. Of course, your system might be mechanical OR it might just be a group of people each one just "doing their job." From a result oriented point of view, you might end up with a mechanical system that oppresses less people than a people system. I don't feel good about either one, but I also don't feel good about causing wide scale misery because at least it's people screwing over other people instead of a machine screwing over people. [Of course it's worth noting that I don't trust the technology at all. It's just that I also don't trust the human solution that it claims it can replace.]
  - mitchdoogle 5y ago
    The problem is making assumptions about why people are experiencing certain emotions, or telling people they are wrong when they say, "I'm actually not angry"
esalman 5y ago
I think what the author is suggesting is that decision making, especially those which can critically affect a person, should not be automated by machines. There must be a mechanism in place which is open to scrutiny (preferably by a qualified human) and accountability. Take the example of predicting terrorism threats based on facial queues of stress or fear. Machines lack context, which a qualified human would otherwise take into consideration. You can be stressed out because you might be accompanying a child, or fearful that you might miss a flight. If a TSA agent deports someone simply because a machine recommended it, that would be inhumane. People like to argue that more regulation will adversely affect automation and/or growth/scaling of technologies and businesses. Growth is important but it must not cost us our humanity.
- Verdex 5y ago
  Personally, I think this type of thing falls into what I like to call the "all problems are management problems" category. If a TSA agent deports someone simply because the machine recommended it, then that is a problem. But if a TSA agent deports someone simply because they were having a bad day, then that is also a problem. I guess I don't care what tools those in authority are using (their intuition or a mechanical intuition or a database lookup), but what I care about is whether or not innocent people without the ability to navigate an appeal system are being erroneously penalized. And ultimately, it's the responsibility of management to make sure that the people/tools they assign are doing a good job. If they fail, then management needs to find new people/tools. If management fails to do that, then all the AI regulation in the world isn't going to do much good.
  - esalman 5y ago
    Well, the purpose of the AI regulation is specifically to hold the "management" accountable when they fail to prevent misuse of the technology. The regulations are to be enacted by the lawmakers. As I see it, the debates like the one we are having right now will determine how the regulation will be shaped eventually.
    - Verdex 5y ago
adamrezich 5y ago
> Regulate how? make a committee to vote to fund a study to create a subcommittee to vote to fund a study on something from a decade ago with a small, non-representative sample size, reaching predetermined conclusions that justify the need for the committee and all related subcommittees, instead of getting anything done. y'know, government.
visarga 5y ago
> Regulate how? What concrete solutions is the author suggesting? A small group of activists could volunteer to be our ethical conscience. They prefer story telling and emotional appeal to logic, and being warriors all day long, are very tired of everyone else not understanding. And we can't understand unless we go through the same ideological retraining they have, so anything we do is by default failing to reach them. But since they know better, it should be their job anyway to give us the ethical approval. /s
- challengly 5y ago
  That's the problem. Those who most want to do that job are the ones who will abuse it the most.

by ling3 5y ago

dj_mc_merlin 5y ago

The author is not writing down action items after a meeting. It's the job of politicians (presumably) to draft up policy. Activism groups also push for specific regulation sometimes. But stating your policy opens up another angle of attack: those who wish to undermine your ideas can attack your implementation rather than the concept.

pc86 5y ago
It's at best sloppy to just say "this needs to be regulated, but I can't be bothered to suggest even one possible regulation that would fix anything I find so objectionable." The author has a doctorate and works at Microsoft Research on AI. If she thinks it should be regulated (which is absolutely a fair position to take) I'd much rather have her be the one suggesting regulations than some 80 year old lawyer who's been in Congress since the civil rights era or some special interest lobbyist.
- dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
  Her understanding of AI does not translate to an understanding of how a society runs or how laws should be made. If anything, many people overgeneralize their expertise at one task to suggest bad solutions to problems from other domains. Especially engineers and PhDs. I agree that she's still better than most US politicians. I have some faith in politicians from Western Europe to do half the correct thing, or at least not be swayed by arguments coming from money too much. Not that much faith, but still..
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    If someone wants to make an argument "this needs to be regulated" then they need to assert that the benefits of doing so outweigh the drawbacks. The article does not really do that; it points out a class of potential harm, but it does not try to present an reasonable argument that regulation is likely to succeed in preventing that harm; and the balance of pros vs cons can't even be discussed without at least some general idea about what kind of regulation we're talking about.
Verdex 5y ago
> those who wish to undermine your ideas can attack your implementation rather than the concept. Yeah, it's frustrating when people do this. But if you want to have real solution at the end of the day, then you'll need to hammer out all of your implementation issues. If you produce an implementation that is flawed, then people will be able to evade the spirit of your regulation rendering it useless.

CivBase 5y ago

Agreed. What even counts as "AI that interprets human emotions"? Is a suggestion algorithm designed to maximize clicks "interpreting human emotions"?

Verdex 5y ago
I find this to be an interesting statement. What happens if you're able to evade regulation by making your "AI that interprets human emotions" of really poor quality. "Your honor, we investigated the source code and discovered that there was technically no AI being utilized. It was a poorly formatted series of if-statements. Honestly, I wouldn't even consider this a program. How it avoids crashing the moment it's run is beyond me." Like, does AI mean some statistical method is used? That large data sets were used? Are you using some declarative language like prolog? Ultimately the only definition I can see them coming to will reduce to "person uses computer to do thing I don't like." And somehow I don't think that's going to actually help.

Hizonner 5y ago

Well, I suggest an outright total ban on anything that purports to read people's emotions. Either it doesn't work, in which case it shouldn't be used, or it does work, in which case it shouldn't be used.

Verdex 5y ago
People can read other people's emotions. You can build a mechanical turk program that's effectively the same as having a personal concierge agent with respect to the regulation. Like, if you ban reading people's emotions you effectively have to also ban any human interaction.
- Hizonner 5y ago
  It's still completely reasonable to ban automating it. The impact of having it done in an automated way is completely different from the impact of having it done on a person-to-person basis, for a lot of reasons, starting with scale. It's also reasonable to ban anything that claims to be better at it than a human.
  - Verdex 5y ago
    I don't think it's completely reasonable to ban it. Although, I would agree that it's completely reasonable to restrict nearly anything. Although, I do like your comment about scale. If you have a system that's 99% successful, then if you apply it to everyone in the US then you're failing 3 million people. That's a problem. Of course, your system might be mechanical OR it might just be a group of people each one just "doing their job." From a result oriented point of view, you might end up with a mechanical system that oppresses less people than a people system. I don't feel good about either one, but I also don't feel good about causing wide scale misery because at least it's people screwing over other people instead of a machine screwing over people. [Of course it's worth noting that I don't trust the technology at all. It's just that I also don't trust the human solution that it claims it can replace.]
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  The problem is making assumptions about why people are experiencing certain emotions, or telling people they are wrong when they say, "I'm actually not angry"

esalman 5y ago

I think what the author is suggesting is that decision making, especially those which can critically affect a person, should not be automated by machines. There must be a mechanism in place which is open to scrutiny (preferably by a qualified human) and accountability. Take the example of predicting terrorism threats based on facial queues of stress or fear. Machines lack context, which a qualified human would otherwise take into consideration. You can be stressed out because you might be accompanying a child, or fearful that you might miss a flight. If a TSA agent deports someone simply because a machine recommended it, that would be inhumane. People like to argue that more regulation will adversely affect automation and/or growth/scaling of technologies and businesses. Growth is important but it must not cost us our humanity.

Verdex 5y ago
Personally, I think this type of thing falls into what I like to call the "all problems are management problems" category. If a TSA agent deports someone simply because the machine recommended it, then that is a problem. But if a TSA agent deports someone simply because they were having a bad day, then that is also a problem. I guess I don't care what tools those in authority are using (their intuition or a mechanical intuition or a database lookup), but what I care about is whether or not innocent people without the ability to navigate an appeal system are being erroneously penalized. And ultimately, it's the responsibility of management to make sure that the people/tools they assign are doing a good job. If they fail, then management needs to find new people/tools. If management fails to do that, then all the AI regulation in the world isn't going to do much good.
- esalman 5y ago
  Well, the purpose of the AI regulation is specifically to hold the "management" accountable when they fail to prevent misuse of the technology. The regulations are to be enacted by the lawmakers. As I see it, the debates like the one we are having right now will determine how the regulation will be shaped eventually.
  - Verdex 5y ago

adamrezich 5y ago

> Regulate how? make a committee to vote to fund a study to create a subcommittee to vote to fund a study on something from a decade ago with a small, non-representative sample size, reaching predetermined conclusions that justify the need for the committee and all related subcommittees, instead of getting anything done. y'know, government.

visarga 5y ago

> Regulate how? What concrete solutions is the author suggesting? A small group of activists could volunteer to be our ethical conscience. They prefer story telling and emotional appeal to logic, and being warriors all day long, are very tired of everyone else not understanding. And we can't understand unless we go through the same ideological retraining they have, so anything we do is by default failing to reach them. But since they know better, it should be their job anyway to give us the ethical approval. /s

challengly 5y ago
That's the problem. Those who most want to do that job are the ones who will abuse it the most.