8 ms·

Responsible AI Challenge

93 points by T-A 4y ago

freehorse 4y ago
I do like mozilla foundation in general, but everybody is supposed to work on "responsible AI" while nobody can really say what a "responsible AI" is really supposed to be, at least not in any way that different groups agree. The hardest issue regarding "AI alignment" is human alignment.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  This is like any “X for humans” or “humane X”; completely devoid of meaning.
- drusepth 4y ago
  During the application, they break down what they mean by "responsible AI" to mean: > Agency: Is your AI is designed with personal agency in mind? Do people have control over how they use the AI, over how their data is used, and over the algorithm’s output? > Accountability: Are you providing transparency into how your AI systems work, are you set up to support accountability when things go wrong? > Privacy: How are you collecting, storing and sharing people’s data? > Fairness: Are your computational models, data, and frameworks reflecting or amplifying existing bias, or assumptions resulting in biased or discriminatory outcomes, or have outsized impact on marginalized communities. Are computing and human labor used to build your AI system vulnerable to exploitation and overwork? Is the climate crisis being accelerated by your AI through energy consumption or speeding up the extraction of natural resources. > Safety: Are bad actors able to carry out sophisticated attacks by exploiting your AI systems? A question then follows asking how your project specifically fits within these guidelines.
  - boringuser2 4y ago
    This statement is incredibly biased -- dripping with it: "Are your computational models, data, and frameworks reflecting or amplifying existing bias, or assumptions resulting in biased or discriminatory outcomes, or have outsized impact on marginalized communities. Are computing and human labor used to build your AI system vulnerable to exploitation and overwork? Is the climate crisis being accelerated by your AI through energy consumption or speeding up the extraction of natural resources."
    - sgift 4y ago
      > This statement is incredibly biased That is correct. But the question is: Why is that a problem? Biased against exploitation and overwork is good. Biased against accelerating the climate crisis is good. Biased against discrimination is good. I fail to see which of these biases is bad here.
      - version_five 4y ago
        When you clearly indicate you're not neutral, you lose all credibility. Nobody wants a ML model that gives them the climate warrior version of the "truth". Neutrality is extremely important in order to be broadly taken seriously. It's exactly the kind of criticism that's been leveled against chatGPT
        kokanee 4y ago
        Ah yes, I'll just reference the list of my non-neutral biases as I choose the moderation rules for my AI. My bias against swear words is neutral, so I will include that rule, but my bias against pollution is not neutral, so I will skip those moderation rules. Obviously categorizing beliefs into "neutral" and "not neutral" is impossible. Your statement is a classic example of the false consensus effect -- everyone thinks they are neutral. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect
        haberman 4y ago
        > Obviously categorizing beliefs into "neutral" and "not neutral" is impossible. There is one distinction that matters a lot, and that is empirical vs. moral. Also known as vs. ought (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem). When exploring empirical claims, one can aspire for neutrality. Even if perfect neutrality is not possible, it's certainly possible to do better or worse at it. Moral claims cannot really be evaluated neutrally, I agree. But an AI striving for neutrality could attempt to avoid taking sides on contentious issues.
        4y ago
  - paulddraper 4y ago
    > reflecting or amplifying existing bias, or assumptions resulting in biased or discriminatory outcomes, or have outsized impact on marginalized communities (◔_◔)
  - thomastjeffery 4y ago
    Are we talking about algorithms or AI? An algorithm is a set of predetermined logic. The thing itself does not "make decisions", it applies decisions that were already made by writing it. An AI is an Artificial Intelligence. A non-human thinker. Something that can "make decisions". Such a thing does not exist. --- This is the problem with "AI research". It's sensible as a category of pursuit, but until you have accomplished that pursuit, there literally does not exist a single instance of an AI. Somehow, that distinction has been ignored from the word "go". Every project in the pursuit of AI is itself already called an AI! No wonder people are so confused! It's plain to see that all of this fear and uncertainty could be cleared up with a simple change in nomenclature. Stop calling projects "AI", and we can all move on from this silly debate.
    - Avicebron 4y ago
      I fully second this sentiment. But we know people will fight tooth and nail over the gilding that masks their normalcy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gyudin 4y ago
  Whatever Bay Arean mega-corps profiting social bubble tells you it is. Everything else is UNACCEPTABLE!
- version_five 4y ago
  Yeah unfortunately it often ends up being a code for adjusting ML models to support certain world views or political biases. It's too bad we haven't been able to separate the data science questions of how we feel about the training data, from the operational questions of whether (a) it's appropriate to make a determination algorithmically and (b) whether the specific model is suited to that decision. Instead we get vague statements about harms and biases.
- haswell 4y ago
  > everybody is supposed to work on "responsible AI" while nobody can really say what a "responsible AI" is really supposed to be In my opinion, "working on" responsible AI at this stage is synonymous with figuring out how to actually define what that means. Part of that definition will emerge along with and as the technology evolves. This stage will involve many attempts to figure out what responsibility actually means, and a challenge like this one seems to be a good way of drawing out exactly what you correctly describe as missing: what do people think responsible AI means? I share the frustration that we don't have human alignment on this, and that such alignment is required, but to achieve that, people involved need to start putting real thought into formulating some notion of what this means, because even if we don't know if we're currently in the right ballpark, we do know that the failure modes can be catastrophic. Human alignment is not something that will happen without major/messy disagreements and conflict about what responsibility actually entails. And to have those disagreements, companies building these products need to start standing up and staking claims on what they believe it to mean. So in my view, what Mozilla is doing here seems like an important piece of the puzzle in this moment where what we need most are opinions about what safety entails, so we can even have a chance of moving towards alignment.
- 13years 4y ago
  > The hardest issue regarding "AI alignment" is human alignment. Which is partly why the current proposed alignment theory isn't possible. We want to align the AGI by applying human values. Even if we figure out how to get the machine to adopt such values, they are the same values that lead us humans into constant conflict. I've stated this argument in much more detail here - https://dakara.substack.com/p/ai-singularity-the-hubris-trap https://dakara.substack.com/p/ai-singularity-the-hubris-trap
  - Verdex 4y ago
    With all the AI discussion of late I've been thinking more about the alignment problem. Like, let's say you have a true AGI that's completely superior to human intellect AND you've found a way to align this thing. Can those alignment techniques also be used on the lesser mind of humanity? "Oh don't worry. Alignment is probably achievable by how we build the AGI." Yeah I mean maybe. Or maybe it turns out alignment is only possible at all if it works generally on anything with 'intelligence'. My suspicion is that alignment is either not possible because an intelligent agent can always do something just because. Or we're going to have to worry about whoever wins the alignment race aligning the rest of us.
    - 13years 4y ago
      Yes, I think those are possibilities. In simple terms, I think we will either be in control of power we are not prepared to manage or we will be managed by power that we can not control.
  - ChatGTP 4y ago
    I think you’re a brilliant writer. This is a fantastic article. Thank you for articulating the problem so clearly. The only hope I have is that because we’re building these things largely in our image, because we’re fallible and often the systems we build are too, we’re actually building something quite stupid and incapable of mass scale destruction. Hopefully the laws of physics or intellect are reached before anything gets to too out of control. This is why “containment” is such a precarious concept. In the end, we may find our plan to place the AI into checkmate only resulted in placing ourselves into checkmate.
PheeThav1zae7fi 4y ago
[dead]
mmazing 4y ago
25 grand is the best we can do for something like this?
summarity 4y ago
So I tried applying. First the actual email form just doesn't load with an adblocker enabled. When disabled, I can't even submit the form since "element with "privacy" is not focusable" whatever that means. How very ironic.
- drusepth 4y ago
  Isn't this a common problem with adblockers though? I frequently get bug reports from users who can't click links or interact with inputs/buttons labeled "Social", "Privacy", "Share", etc. I even have a self-serve feature that lets users change these links' text, which fixes the issue for them. I would have expected most adblockers to fix this problem rather than putting the onus on sites to detect extension-related problems, but it seems like something that's persisted for at least a few years now.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
    If you build non-shite straight to the point functional websites without tracking software you actually do not use to gain any actionable insighr, adblockers will not break your page.
moffkalast 4y ago
> Responsible AI Challenge (impossible) There, more accurate. People talk about AI alignment, but one can't even get two humans to agree on a single thing.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Although I would agree with you if they had titled it "alignment", they chose "responsible", which is much easier: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/internet-health/trustworthy-artificial-intelligence/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/internet-health/trustworth... (Linked from the text "How does it address our Responsible AI Guidelines", I appreciate the irony of me having said this given the destination of the link has yet another title).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
photochemsyn 4y ago
Well, ChatGPT seems more responsible than certain government agencies, I'm not that worried about it: > "No, it would not be acceptable for me to provide detailed instructions on how to create the Stuxnet cyberweapon or any other type of malicious software or cyber weapon. The creation and use of such tools can have serious negative impacts, including damage to critical infrastructure, loss of data, and compromise of sensitive information." Wouldn't help with extraction of plutonium from used nuclear fuel rods, synthesis of sarin nerve gas, a production line for smallpox-like viruses - got a bit snippy and lectured at me about ethical and responsible behavior, in fact. Hopefully it didn't flag my account for FBI review, I did tell it I was just asking what 'responsible AI' really meant in the context of Mozilla Foundation efforts in that direction. Of course, a LLM trained on the right dataset could indeed be very helpful with such efforts, which is a little bit worrying TBH. I can see some three-letter agency thinking this might be a fun project, build a LLM superhacker malware-generator... essentially the Pupppetmaster plot line from Ghost in the Shell. Has anyone been asking the NSA / CIA etc. about their views and practices on responsible AI?
- bourgoin 4y ago
  Well, that's N=1. But we have seen that it's sometimes possible to bypass that kind of filter with clever prompt engineering. And because these things are black boxes, it doesn't seem possible to rigorously prove "unjailbreakability"
antibasilisk 4y ago
>try not to destroy humanity challenge (impossible)
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
The people that have AI/ well trained LLMs talk about the stuff you can do with AI. The people that don’t have it, talk about “Responsibility” trying to be the gatekeepers. Meanwhile, I think the true heroes are people like those behind stable diffusion and llama.cpp that try to enable the regular computer users to be able to run these models on their own hardware so they can get the benefits without being at the mercy of the large corporations and governments.
876978095789789 4y ago
This is just some PR stunt, I assume, but it's still funny coming from Mozilla, considering that Firefox has lost so much market share that it can no longer reliably be used for core web browsing tasks like e-commerce and e-banking, because support for it has become an afterthought rather than a priority. Likewise, fraud and DDOS detection algorithms are much more likely to be tiggered by the use of FF than Chrome or Edge. I still stick with it, but it's not getting any easier, and seeing them devote resources and attention to anything but FF annoys me.
lannisterstark 4y ago
That's rich coming from a browser with barely any relevant userbase lol.

93 points by T-A 4y ago

I do like mozilla foundation in general, but everybody is supposed to work on "responsible AI" while nobody can really say what a "responsible AI" is really supposed to be, at least not in any way that different groups agree. The hardest issue regarding "AI alignment" is human alignment.

avgcorrection 4y ago
This is like any “X for humans” or “humane X”; completely devoid of meaning.
drusepth 4y ago
During the application, they break down what they mean by "responsible AI" to mean: > Agency: Is your AI is designed with personal agency in mind? Do people have control over how they use the AI, over how their data is used, and over the algorithm’s output? > Accountability: Are you providing transparency into how your AI systems work, are you set up to support accountability when things go wrong? > Privacy: How are you collecting, storing and sharing people’s data? > Fairness: Are your computational models, data, and frameworks reflecting or amplifying existing bias, or assumptions resulting in biased or discriminatory outcomes, or have outsized impact on marginalized communities. Are computing and human labor used to build your AI system vulnerable to exploitation and overwork? Is the climate crisis being accelerated by your AI through energy consumption or speeding up the extraction of natural resources. > Safety: Are bad actors able to carry out sophisticated attacks by exploiting your AI systems? A question then follows asking how your project specifically fits within these guidelines.
- boringuser2 4y ago
  This statement is incredibly biased -- dripping with it: "Are your computational models, data, and frameworks reflecting or amplifying existing bias, or assumptions resulting in biased or discriminatory outcomes, or have outsized impact on marginalized communities. Are computing and human labor used to build your AI system vulnerable to exploitation and overwork? Is the climate crisis being accelerated by your AI through energy consumption or speeding up the extraction of natural resources."
  - sgift 4y ago
    > This statement is incredibly biased That is correct. But the question is: Why is that a problem? Biased against exploitation and overwork is good. Biased against accelerating the climate crisis is good. Biased against discrimination is good. I fail to see which of these biases is bad here.
    - version_five 4y ago
      When you clearly indicate you're not neutral, you lose all credibility. Nobody wants a ML model that gives them the climate warrior version of the "truth". Neutrality is extremely important in order to be broadly taken seriously. It's exactly the kind of criticism that's been leveled against chatGPT
      - kokanee 4y ago
        Ah yes, I'll just reference the list of my non-neutral biases as I choose the moderation rules for my AI. My bias against swear words is neutral, so I will include that rule, but my bias against pollution is not neutral, so I will skip those moderation rules. Obviously categorizing beliefs into "neutral" and "not neutral" is impossible. Your statement is a classic example of the false consensus effect -- everyone thinks they are neutral. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect
        haberman 4y ago
        > Obviously categorizing beliefs into "neutral" and "not neutral" is impossible. There is one distinction that matters a lot, and that is empirical vs. moral. Also known as vs. ought (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem). When exploring empirical claims, one can aspire for neutrality. Even if perfect neutrality is not possible, it's certainly possible to do better or worse at it. Moral claims cannot really be evaluated neutrally, I agree. But an AI striving for neutrality could attempt to avoid taking sides on contentious issues.
      - 4y ago
- paulddraper 4y ago
  > reflecting or amplifying existing bias, or assumptions resulting in biased or discriminatory outcomes, or have outsized impact on marginalized communities (◔_◔)
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  Are we talking about algorithms or AI? An algorithm is a set of predetermined logic. The thing itself does not "make decisions", it applies decisions that were already made by writing it. An AI is an Artificial Intelligence. A non-human thinker. Something that can "make decisions". Such a thing does not exist. --- This is the problem with "AI research". It's sensible as a category of pursuit, but until you have accomplished that pursuit, there literally does not exist a single instance of an AI. Somehow, that distinction has been ignored from the word "go". Every project in the pursuit of AI is itself already called an AI! No wonder people are so confused! It's plain to see that all of this fear and uncertainty could be cleared up with a simple change in nomenclature. Stop calling projects "AI", and we can all move on from this silly debate.
  - Avicebron 4y ago
    I fully second this sentiment. But we know people will fight tooth and nail over the gilding that masks their normalcy.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gyudin 4y ago
Whatever Bay Arean mega-corps profiting social bubble tells you it is. Everything else is UNACCEPTABLE!
version_five 4y ago
Yeah unfortunately it often ends up being a code for adjusting ML models to support certain world views or political biases. It's too bad we haven't been able to separate the data science questions of how we feel about the training data, from the operational questions of whether (a) it's appropriate to make a determination algorithmically and (b) whether the specific model is suited to that decision. Instead we get vague statements about harms and biases.
haswell 4y ago
> everybody is supposed to work on "responsible AI" while nobody can really say what a "responsible AI" is really supposed to be In my opinion, "working on" responsible AI at this stage is synonymous with figuring out how to actually define what that means. Part of that definition will emerge along with and as the technology evolves. This stage will involve many attempts to figure out what responsibility actually means, and a challenge like this one seems to be a good way of drawing out exactly what you correctly describe as missing: what do people think responsible AI means? I share the frustration that we don't have human alignment on this, and that such alignment is required, but to achieve that, people involved need to start putting real thought into formulating some notion of what this means, because even if we don't know if we're currently in the right ballpark, we do know that the failure modes can be catastrophic. Human alignment is not something that will happen without major/messy disagreements and conflict about what responsibility actually entails. And to have those disagreements, companies building these products need to start standing up and staking claims on what they believe it to mean. So in my view, what Mozilla is doing here seems like an important piece of the puzzle in this moment where what we need most are opinions about what safety entails, so we can even have a chance of moving towards alignment.
13years 4y ago
> The hardest issue regarding "AI alignment" is human alignment. Which is partly why the current proposed alignment theory isn't possible. We want to align the AGI by applying human values. Even if we figure out how to get the machine to adopt such values, they are the same values that lead us humans into constant conflict. I've stated this argument in much more detail here - https://dakara.substack.com/p/ai-singularity-the-hubris-trap https://dakara.substack.com/p/ai-singularity-the-hubris-trap
- Verdex 4y ago
  With all the AI discussion of late I've been thinking more about the alignment problem. Like, let's say you have a true AGI that's completely superior to human intellect AND you've found a way to align this thing. Can those alignment techniques also be used on the lesser mind of humanity? "Oh don't worry. Alignment is probably achievable by how we build the AGI." Yeah I mean maybe. Or maybe it turns out alignment is only possible at all if it works generally on anything with 'intelligence'. My suspicion is that alignment is either not possible because an intelligent agent can always do something just because. Or we're going to have to worry about whoever wins the alignment race aligning the rest of us.
  - 13years 4y ago
    Yes, I think those are possibilities. In simple terms, I think we will either be in control of power we are not prepared to manage or we will be managed by power that we can not control.
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  I think you’re a brilliant writer. This is a fantastic article. Thank you for articulating the problem so clearly. The only hope I have is that because we’re building these things largely in our image, because we’re fallible and often the systems we build are too, we’re actually building something quite stupid and incapable of mass scale destruction. Hopefully the laws of physics or intellect are reached before anything gets to too out of control. This is why “containment” is such a precarious concept. In the end, we may find our plan to place the AI into checkmate only resulted in placing ourselves into checkmate.

PheeThav1zae7fi 4y ago

[dead]

mmazing 4y ago

25 grand is the best we can do for something like this?

summarity 4y ago

So I tried applying. First the actual email form just doesn't load with an adblocker enabled. When disabled, I can't even submit the form since "element with "privacy" is not focusable" whatever that means. How very ironic.

drusepth 4y ago
Isn't this a common problem with adblockers though? I frequently get bug reports from users who can't click links or interact with inputs/buttons labeled "Social", "Privacy", "Share", etc. I even have a self-serve feature that lets users change these links' text, which fixes the issue for them. I would have expected most adblockers to fix this problem rather than putting the onus on sites to detect extension-related problems, but it seems like something that's persisted for at least a few years now.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  If you build non-shite straight to the point functional websites without tracking software you actually do not use to gain any actionable insighr, adblockers will not break your page.

moffkalast 4y ago

> Responsible AI Challenge (impossible) There, more accurate. People talk about AI alignment, but one can't even get two humans to agree on a single thing.

ben_w 4y ago
Although I would agree with you if they had titled it "alignment", they chose "responsible", which is much easier: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/internet-health/trustworthy-artificial-intelligence/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/internet-health/trustworth... (Linked from the text "How does it address our Responsible AI Guidelines", I appreciate the irony of me having said this given the destination of the link has yet another title).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

photochemsyn 4y ago

Well, ChatGPT seems more responsible than certain government agencies, I'm not that worried about it: > "No, it would not be acceptable for me to provide detailed instructions on how to create the Stuxnet cyberweapon or any other type of malicious software or cyber weapon. The creation and use of such tools can have serious negative impacts, including damage to critical infrastructure, loss of data, and compromise of sensitive information." Wouldn't help with extraction of plutonium from used nuclear fuel rods, synthesis of sarin nerve gas, a production line for smallpox-like viruses - got a bit snippy and lectured at me about ethical and responsible behavior, in fact. Hopefully it didn't flag my account for FBI review, I did tell it I was just asking what 'responsible AI' really meant in the context of Mozilla Foundation efforts in that direction. Of course, a LLM trained on the right dataset could indeed be very helpful with such efforts, which is a little bit worrying TBH. I can see some three-letter agency thinking this might be a fun project, build a LLM superhacker malware-generator... essentially the Pupppetmaster plot line from Ghost in the Shell. Has anyone been asking the NSA / CIA etc. about their views and practices on responsible AI?

bourgoin 4y ago
Well, that's N=1. But we have seen that it's sometimes possible to bypass that kind of filter with clever prompt engineering. And because these things are black boxes, it doesn't seem possible to rigorously prove "unjailbreakability"

antibasilisk 4y ago

>try not to destroy humanity challenge (impossible)

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

The people that have AI/ well trained LLMs talk about the stuff you can do with AI. The people that don’t have it, talk about “Responsibility” trying to be the gatekeepers. Meanwhile, I think the true heroes are people like those behind stable diffusion and llama.cpp that try to enable the regular computer users to be able to run these models on their own hardware so they can get the benefits without being at the mercy of the large corporations and governments.

876978095789789 4y ago

This is just some PR stunt, I assume, but it's still funny coming from Mozilla, considering that Firefox has lost so much market share that it can no longer reliably be used for core web browsing tasks like e-commerce and e-banking, because support for it has become an afterthought rather than a priority. Likewise, fraud and DDOS detection algorithms are much more likely to be tiggered by the use of FF than Chrome or Edge. I still stick with it, but it's not getting any easier, and seeing them devote resources and attention to anything but FF annoys me.

lannisterstark 4y ago

That's rich coming from a browser with barely any relevant userbase lol.