
Can Artificial Intelligence Be Ethical? - sonabinu
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/can-artificial-intelligence-be-ethical-by-peter-singer-2016-04
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ttctciyf
> Teaching ethics to a machine that is more intelligent than we are, in a wide
> range of fields, is a far more daunting task.

... but then ex-hypothesis, shouldn't a human-plus intelligent machine be
teaching us ethics, rather than the other way around?

To suppose otherwise is to assume there's something about ethics that's
antithetical to machine intelligence, whereas (without a specific reason to
the contrary) it might be reasonably held to be not unlike any other
social/psychological knowledge domain which should be mastered to human+ level
by the sort of AGI being talked about.

On the other hand, if by "teaching ethics to a machine" the article really
means "ensuring the machine behaves in a way that we regard as meeting our
ethical norms" (which isn't the same thing at all, obviously) then all bets
are off: the machine's intelligence exceeding ours strongly implies (to me,
anyway) our inability to predict its behaviour, so I'd agree that strong
guarantees are at least problematic in this respect.

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thelamest
> the machine's intelligence exceeding ours strongly implies (to me, anyway)
> our inability to predict its behaviour

Cognition and affect/motivation get conflated a lot in AI discussions.
Motivations don't magically arise from intelligence. They are not just
acquired in upbringing either. Affect is a separate and innate system that
requires its own explicit hardwiring. There is some imprinting, conditioning
and other fine tuning with experiential feedback, but the basic drives and
reward rules (and morals) have to be there from the beginning. Otherwise the
person, artificial or not, will be catatonic.

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nxzero
More important questions is not if AI is able to be ethical, but if humanity
is able to respect the rights of AI.

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sebastianconcpt
The big question is who, actually how, ethics gets defined, so integrated into
the AI.

But is hard to think in defining ethics in an universal timeless manner. I
think the main issue is the unpredictability of the future.

The closest thing I can think of is an hypotetical matrix (or bunch of
equations) that maximizes the outcome in the evolutionary path for each
individual (having in mind all their interactions between one another). The
kind of calculus that once was attributed to be only solvable by The Great
Matematician.

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amelius
If machines act according to the law, and the law defines what is ethical,
then there should be no problem.

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pdwetz
The primary concern being that laws are by no means ethical. The easiest
example is slavery in the US Constitution.

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frooxie
Also, even if every law was made in accordance with some perfect ethical
system (whatever that would be), problems remain:

1\. You can still do unethical things that are too small or too big for laws
to handle. It's perfectly legal to cheat on your partner, or to mock a bullied
child, or to form a political party that takes power and repeals laws you
don't like.

2\. Even for the things that are covered by laws, a superhuman AI would be
able to find bizarre loopholes that obey the letter of the law but would be
considered unethical by most people.

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amelius
Well in a sense, we are already in this situation with companies. Companies
always seek out the limits of the law, without much attention to what is
ethical. But somehow, in the end, we seem to be able to control them (from a
democratic perspective).

