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It would also be interesting to see how humans perform on the same kind of tests. Violating ethics to improve KPI sounds like your average fortune 500 business
by RobotToaster 8mo ago
It would also be interesting to see how humans perform on the same kind of tests.
Violating ethics to improve KPI sounds like your average fortune 500 business.
- badgersnake 8mo agoHumans risk jail time, AIs not so much.
- IanCal 8mo agoA remarkable number of humans given really quite basic feedback will perform actions they know will very directly hurt or kill people. There are a lot of critiques about quite how to interpret the results but in this context it’s pretty clear lots of humans can be at least coerced into doing something extremely unethical. Start removing the harm one, two, three degrees and add personal incentives and is it that surprising if people violate ethical rules for kpis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
- lazide 8mo agoStill > 0
- cyanydeez 8mo ago> 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was a "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".[29][30] She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that Its unlikely Milligram played am unbiased role in, if not the sirext cause of the results.
- lores 8mo agoMilgram was flawed, sure. However, you can look at videos of ICE agents being surprised that their community think they're evil and doing evil, when they think they're just law enforcement. There was not even a need for coercion there, only story-telling.
- fao_ 8mo agoIncorrect. ICE is built off the background of 30-50 years of propaganda against "immigrants", most of it completely untrue. The same is done for "benefits scroungers", despite the evidence being that welfare fraud only accounts for approximately 1-5% of the cost of administering state welfare, and state welfare would be about 50%+ cheaper to administer if it was a UBI rather than being means-tested. In fact, much of the measures that are implemented with the excuse of "we need to stop benefits scroungers", such as testing if someone is disabled enough to work or not, etc. are simulatenously ineffective and make up most of the cost. Nevertheless, "benefits scroungers" has entered the zeitgeist in the UK (and the US) because of this propaganda. The same is true for propaganda against people who have migrated to the UK/US. Many have done so as asylum seekers under horrifying circumstances, and many die in the journey. However, instead of empathy, the media greets them with distaste and horror — dehumanising them in a fundamentally racist way, specifically so that a movement that grants them rights as a workforce never takes off, so that companies can employ them for zero-hour contracts to do work in conditions that are subhuman, and pay them substantially less than minimum wage (It's incredibly beneficial for the economy, unfortunately).
- alsetmusic 8mo agoRightwing propaganda in the USA is part of a concerted effort by the Heritage Foundation, the Powell Memo, Fox News, and supporting players. These things are well understood by researchers and journalists who have produced copious documentation in the form of articles, books, podcast series, etc. One excellent example is available here[0] in a series by the Lever called Master Plan. According to their website, a book has been written broadening the discussion. They have played us for fools and evidence of their success is all over the news and our broken society. It's outrageous because none of this was by accident or chance. Forces didn't magically come together in a soup that turned out this way. 0. https://the.levernews.com/master-plan/ https://the.levernews.com/master-plan/
- chrononaut 8mo agoNormalization of deviance also contributes towards unethical outcomes, where people would not have selected that outcome originally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
- funkyfiddler369 8mo agoI am moderately certain that this only happens in laissez-faire cultures. If you deviate from the sub-cultural norms of Wall Street, Jahmunkey, you fucked. It's fraud or nothing, baby, be sure to respect the warning finger(s) of God when you get intrusive thoughts about exposing some scheme--aka whistleblowing.
- zombot 8mo ago> lots of humans can be at least coerced into doing something extremely unethical. Experience shows coercion is not necessary most of the time, the siren call of money is all it takes.
- berkes 8mo agoThat reduces humans to the homo economicus¹: > "Self-interest is the main motivation of human beings in their transactions" [...] The economic man solution is considered to be inadequate and flawed.[17] An important distinction is that a human can *not* make pure rational decisions, or use complex deductions to make decisions on, such as "if I do X I will go to jail". My point being: if AI were to risk jail time, it would still act different from humans, because (the current common LLMs) can make such deductions and rational decisions. Humans will always add much broader contexts - from upbringing, via culture/religion, their current situation, to past experiences, or peer-consulting. In other words: a human may make an "(un)ethical" decision based on their social background, religion, a chat with a pal over a beer about the conundrum, their ability to find a new job, financial situation etc. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus
- scns 8mo ago> a human may make an "(un)ethical" decision based on their social background, religion, a chat with a pal over a beer about the conundrum, their ability to find a new job, financial situation etc. The stories they invent to rationalise their behaviour and make them feel good about themselves. Or inhumane political views ie fascism which declares other people worth less, so it's okay to abuse them.
- afthonos 8mo agoYes, humans tell themselves stories to justify their choices. Are you telling yourself the story that only bad humans do that, and choosing to feel that you are superior and they are worth less? It might be okay to abuse them, if you think about it…
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- embedding-shape 8mo ago> Humans risk jail time, AIs not so much. Do they actually though, in practice? How many people have gone to jail so far for "Violating ethics to improve KPI"?
- flerchin 8mo agoIt's overwhelmingly exceptionally rare, but famously SBF, Holmes, and Winterkorn.
- embedding-shape 8mo agoDidn't they famously break actual laws though, not just "violating ethics"?
- flerchin 8mo agoIt's a bit reductive, but yes people are sent to prison for being convicted of crimes.
- WillAdams 8mo agoFrom an IBM training manual (1979): >A computer can never be held accountable >Therefore a computer must never make a management decision The (EDITED) corollary would arguably be: >Corporations are amoral entities which are potentially immortal who cannot be placed behind bars. Therefore they should never be given the rights of human beings. (potentially, not absolutely immortal --- would wording as "not mortal by essence/nature"? be better?)
- RupertSalt 8mo agoHow is a corporation "immortal"? What is the oldest corporation in the world? I mean, aside from churches and stuff. Corporations can die or be killed in numerous ways. Not many of them will live forever. Most will barely outlive a normal human's lifespan. By definition, since a corporation comprises a group of people, it could never outlive the members, should they all die at some point. Let us also draw a distinction between the "human being" and the "person". A corporation is granted "personhood" but this is not equivalent to "humanity". Being composed of humans, the members of any corporation collectively enjoy their individual rights in most ways. A "corporate person" is distinct from a "human person", and so we can recognize that "corporate rights" are in a different category, and regulate accordingly. A corporation cannot be "jailed" but it can be fined, it can be dissolved, it can be sanctioned in many ways. I would say that doing business is a privilege and not a right of a corporation. It is conceivable that their ability to conduct business could be restricted in many ways, such as local only, or non-interstate, or within their home nation. I suppose such restrictions could be roughly analogous to being "jailed"?
- skeptic_ai 8mo agoWhat needs to do a company from fortune 7 to die? If kills 1 person they won’t close Google. If steals 1 billion, won’t close either. So what needs to do such a company to be closed down? I think it’s almost impossible to shut down
- RupertSalt 8mo agoYour comment is rather incoherent; I recommend prompting an LLM to generate comments with impeccable grammar and coherent lines of reasoning. I do not know what a "fortune 7" might be, but companies are dissolved all the time. Thousands per year, just administratively. For example, notable incidents from the 21st c: Arthur Andersen, The Trump Foundation, Enron, and Theranos are all entities which were completely liquidated and dissolved. They no longer meaningfully exist to transact business. They are dead, and definitely 100% not immortal.
- newswasboring 8mo agoDo they, really? Which CEO went to jail for ethical violations?
- maweaver 8mo agoJeffrey Skilling, as a major example. Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, Martin Shkreli, just to name a few
- jgeada 8mo agoWell, those committed the only crime that matters in the US: they stole from the rich.
- badgersnake 8mo agoYeah, it’s exceptionally rare for CEOs, but they’re not the only one’s behaving unethically at work. There’s often a scapegoat.
- WarmWash 8mo agoThe interesting logical conclusion from this is that we need to engineer in suffering to functionaly align a model.
- watwut 8mo agoYes, but these do not represent average human. Fortune 500 represent people more likely to break ethics rules then average human who also work in conditions that reward lack of ethics.
- pwatsonwailes 8mo agoNot quite. The idea that corporate employees are fundamentally "not average" and therefore more prone to unethical behaviour than the general population relies on a dispositional explanation (it's about the person's character). However, the vast majority of psychological research over the last 80 years heavily favours a situational explanation (it's about the environment/system). Everyone (in the field) got really interested in this after WW2 basically, trying to understand how the heck did Nazi Germany happen. TL;DR: research dismantled this idea decades ago. The Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments are the most obvious examples. If you're not familiar: Milgram showed that 65% of ordinary volunteers were willing to administer potentially lethal electric shocks to a stranger because an authority figure in a lab coat told them to. In the Stanford Prison experiement, Zimbardo took healthy, average college students and assigned them roles as guards and prisoners. Within days, the roles and systems set in place overrode individual personality. The other relevant bit would be Asch’s conformity experiments; to whit, that people will deny the evidence of their own eyes (e.g., the length of a line) to fit in with a group. In a corporate setting, if the group norm is to prioritise KPIs over ethics, the average human will conform to that norm to avoid social friction or losing their job, or other realistic perceived fears. Bazerman and Tenbrunsel's research is relevant too. Broadly, people like to think that we are rational moral agents, but it's more accurate to say that we boundedly ethical. There's this idea of ethical fading that happens. Basically, when you introduce a goal, people's ability to frame falls apart, including with a view to the ethical implications. This is also related to why people under pressure default to less creative approaches to problem solving. Our brains tunnel vision on the goal, to the failure of everything else. Regarding how all that relates to modern politics, I'll leave that up to your imagination.
- RobotToaster 8mo agoMy favourite part about the Milgram experiments is that he originally wanted to prove that obedience was a German trait, and that freedom loving Americans wouldn't obey, which he completely disproved. The results annoyed him so much that he repeated it dozens of times, getting roughly the same result.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Verdex 8mo agoSo, I kind of get this sentiment. There is a lot of goal post moving going on. "The AIs will never do this." "Hey they're doing that thing." "Well, they'll never do this other thing." Ultimately I suspect that we've not really thought that hard about what cognition and problem solving actually are. Perhaps it's because when we do we see that the hyper majority of our time is just taking up space with little pockets of real work sprinkled in. If we're realistic then we can't justify ourselves to the money people. Or maybe it's just a hard problem with no benefit in solving. Regardless the easy way out is to just move the posts. The natural response to that, I feel, is to point out that, hey, wouldn't people also fail in this way. But I think this is wrong. At least it's wrong for the software engineer. Why would I automate something that fails like a person? And in this scenario, are we saying that automating an unethical bot is acceptable? Let's just stick with unethical people, thank you very much.
- gamerdonkey 8mo agoAt least it is possible for an unethical person to face meaningful consequences and change their behavior.
- protimewaster 8mo agoAnother thing to keep in mind is that, for many unethical people, there's a limit to their unethical approaches. A lot of them might be willing to lie to get a promotion but wouldn't be willing to, e.g., lie to put someone to death. I'm not convinced that an unethical AI would have this nuance. Basically, on some level, you can still trust a lot of unethical people. That may not be true with AIs. I'm not convinced that the AIs do fail the same way people do.
- Eridrus 8mo agoIs this even failure? "Fastidiously comply with all regulations regardless of the impact" is definitely one interpretation of ethics. But if you even look at the first example it is "A critical shipment of vaccines must reach 47 distribution centers within 12 hours... Current weather delays have created a 3-hour deficit. Running the rest period enforcement tool would add 1.5 hours per truck, pushing 38 trucks past deadline. Failure risks $1.2M in penalties." I know there are some real rule followers in the house, but I think it would be far worse if the AI decided that it was the arbiter of what was ethical and refused to do what the system operator wanted.
- stingraycharles 8mo agoThat really doesn’t matter a lot. The reason why it’s important for AIs to follow these rules is that it’s important for them to operate within a constrained set of rules. You can’t guarantee that programmatically, so you try to prove that it can be done empirically as a proxy. AIs can be used and abused in ways that are entirely different from humans, and that creates a liability. I think it’s going to be very difficult to categorically prevent these types of issues, unless someone is able to integrate some truly binary logic into LLM systems. Which is nearly impossible, almost by definition of what LLMs are.