Submitted by Draconic_Flame t3_11rfyk2 in Futurology
Shadowkiller00 t1_jc8a0e6 wrote
AI Ethics. It's pretty much the only job that is impossible to farm out to AI, at least it is if we want to make sure AI stays ethical.
Draconic_Flame OP t1_jc8ahba wrote
I mean it's not like humans do a great job with human ethics...
Shadowkiller00 t1_jc8arff wrote
You are right, human ethics should be monitored by an uninterested third party. When you find someone who fits that bill, let humanity know.
bound4mexico t1_jc8v5gp wrote
I get the cheap joke you're trying to crack, but it's actually a great idea for so many spheres of life. Let an uninterested (human) third party select the ethical thing, and then (all first) parties are pre-bound to abide its decision.
Shadowkiller00 t1_jc9knsp wrote
The problem is that there is no such thing as an uninterested third party who is human or even of this world. The only reasonable uninterested this party would be an ET.
bound4mexico t1_jcaywmy wrote
Not true. We find and harness uninterested third parties in this manner all the time. Judges, witnesses, notaries, juries, you get the picture. We could make it an official job, and make it people from different counties/states/nations/planets, to make them even less likely to be "interested".
Shadowkiller00 t1_jcb5xer wrote
Oh I see, we're talking about different things here. I'm talking about the ethics of humanity as a group. Since all humans are in that group, there is no such thing as an uninterested party.
You appear to be talking about the ethics of smaller groups such as businesses, countries or individuals. An uninterested party will be one who is not within the group(s) for which the ethics are being questioned. Even the idea of taking someone and separating them from humanity so that they could be uninterested could be considered unethical.
You threw the word planets in there as if there are people from different planets, but that's entirely my point. Until there are intelligent creatures from other planets, we cannot fairly judge the ethics of humanity as an entire race.
bound4mexico t1_jcbi0p3 wrote
>I'm talking about the ethics of humanity as a group.
There are no decisions made by the group as a whole, though, so let's just make more ethical decisions by outsourcing more of our contentious decisions to disinterested third parties.
>An uninterested party will be one who is not within the group(s) for which the ethics are being questioned.
No. It will be one who is (judged, fallibly, by humans as) least likely to be affected by the decision in question. A person may not be part of the group(s) yet, but could easily become part of the group(s), have a friend or family member that's part of the group(s) already, have a friend or family member become part of the group(s), or be affected by the group(s)' decisions.
>Even the idea of taking someone and separating them from humanity so that they could be uninterested could be considered unethical.
Of course it would be. But there's absolutely no reason to do this. There are no universal humanity-wide decisions under consideration at that level.
>You threw the word planets in there as if there are people from different planets, but that's entirely my point. Until there are intelligent creatures from other planets, we cannot fairly judge the ethics of humanity as an entire race.
There's no reason to judge the ethics of more than a single decision at a time, ever.
If you're designing ethical AI, that's just a measure of how much the AI conforms to a BI (usually a human)'s ethics. There are "wrong" ethical systems, for example, any ethical system that is self-inconsistent or inconsistent with reality, but there are many, very different, "not-wrong" ethical systems. Ethics are subjective, except in the obvious cases where they're self- or reality-inconsistent. Then, they're objectively wrong.
Shadowkiller00 t1_jcbzcm3 wrote
>There are no decisions made by the group as a whole, though, so let's just make more ethical decisions by outsourcing more of our contentious decisions to disinterested third parties.
This is an ignorant statement. We are a civilization with world wide communication. There are things that we find acceptable and things we do not. For instance, most of the world is totally fine with abusing cheap Chinese labor so that we can have cell phones. Could you find a disinterested party to judge the ethics of this civilization wide choice? Yes. But the chances of that individual being familiar with all the socioeconomic implications and ramifications of judgements related to this topic are pretty low.
>No. It will be one who is (judged, fallibly, by humans as) least likely to be affected by the decision in question. A person may not be part of the group(s) yet, but could easily become part of the group(s), have a friend or family member that's part of the group(s) already, have a friend or family member become part of the group(s), or be affected by the group(s)' decisions.
Then they are not disinterested. There are times, especially in the court of law, where there is no such thing as a disinterested party. In those cases, you have to try to find the least interested party because it would be irresponsible to do otherwise. That may be your point, but it isn't mine. My point is that, to judge the entire human civilization as a whole, you must find someone 100% disinterested. If you don't, then every decision they make will be questioned and rightfully so.
>There's no reason to judge the ethics of more than a single decision at a time, ever.
Again, a very ignorant statement. Individual decisions can be ethical but, when combined, the sum total choice can be unethical.
Here's another example. Should we cure disease? Yes. Should we search the world for cures? Yes. Should we interact with small tribes to help us find these cures? Yes. Should we pay these tribes for the cures they have? Yes. Should we pay them in US dollars? No, they have no use for our currency. Should we pay them with other forms of tender and in amounts that they find adequate for payment? Yes. Should the people who went through the effort of finding these tribes be allowed to make money off of these new cures? Yes.
Each of those individual decisions is perfectly ethical in a vacuum. But the moment you put all these choices together, you end up creating a situation where these small tribes, when they choose to join the larger world, have nothing that the world wants anymore. They have no way to financially catch up with the rest of the world even though they shared their tribal knowledge 10, 20, or 50 years ago. They were paid, at the time of sharing their knowledge, an amount that was adequate in their small economy, but it was peanuts in the world economy and was essentially nothing compared to the amount of money that some corporation made off of their IP. This type of exploitation has been happening for decades, if not centuries.
Again, civilization as a whole hasn't really cared about this. We benefit because we might have a drug that can fight the latest drug resistant bacteria and so we ignore the exploitation that occurred to get us that drug. Again, could you find a disinterested party? Yes. But it would be very difficult to find one who also understands the domino effect of the combined set of decisions.
And even if you have this person a job, for life let's say, what's to stop them from becoming corrupt? What's to stop bribes or threats from happening? Who should pick this person? We've tried to do it to some extent with the United Nations, but you can easily see how effective they are when things like Ukraine rolls around.
>Ethics are subjective...
This is about the only thing we can seem to agree on. It's another reason why there can be no such thing as a disinterested party when it comes to humanity. Since each individual has their own set of ethics, there are no figuratively universal ethics. Even past civilizations have considered certain things to be ethical, such as cannibalism or child sacrifice, that most people today would find abhorrent.
It is just another reason why you have to move beyond the earth of you wish to evaluate the ethics of the earth. If you assume a single ET civilization, you can assume many ET civilizations. If you assume many, then you can assume that they have spoken and agreed on a basic set of ethical laws. Then those basic ethical laws can be applied to humanity to determine how ethical we are in a literally universal sense.
Please just stop responding. I was trying to make a cheeky comment on humanity and describe a wish for something that could never happen. If you are trying to explain to me how it could happen and should happen, then you aren't comprehending what I'm talking about and you are taking my comment too seriously. It would be like if I wished for a time machine so I could go back and kill Hitler and you responded by telling me that I could achieve a similar effect by taking some realistic steps. You could be right, but that wasn't the point of what I was saying.
bound4mexico t1_jcc4m3v wrote
>Could you find a disinterested party to judge the ethics of this civilization wide choice? Yes. But the chances of that individual being familiar with all the socioeconomic implications and ramifications of judgements related to this topic are pretty low.
This doesn't matter. It's not a civilization-wide choice. There's no reason to judge it ethically at the civilization-wide scale.
>Then they are not disinterested.
Of course nobody is perfectly disinterested. But they are much, much more disinterested than interested. The point is finding an infinitesimally interested person, not a literally 100% disinterested person.
>My point is that, to judge the entire human civilization as a whole, you must find someone 100% disinterested.
But there's no need to judge the entire human civilization as a whole. It's irrelevant. Remember, there are only 2 contexts of interest. One, making AI ethical, which is just making an AI's ethics correspond to a BI's ethics. And two, making more decisions more ethically, which can be accomplished by outsourcing ethical questions to disinterested third parties. Why do you think judging human civilization as a whole on ethics is meaningful? Why do you think it's relevant?
>If you don't, then every decision they make will be questioned and rightfully so.
Who is they? Every decision can rightfully be questioned already. To make decisions more ethically, get disinterested third parties to make more of them.
>Individual decisions can be ethical but, when combined, the sum total choice can be unethical.
No, they can't. Any self-inconsistent moral/ethical system is wrong, because it is self-inconsistent.
>Here's another example.
I don't follow what the point of this example is. Every "should" is just you stating that you ethically prefer this course of action to alternatives. It has nothing to do with anything (that I can tell).
>Each of those individual decisions is perfectly ethical in a vacuum.
There's no such thing as "perfectly ethical". There are things that are objectively not-ethical, namely, any ethical system that's self-inconsistent or reality-inconsistent. But, every self-consistent and reality-consistent ethical system is equally valid. There is no dimension of "ethicality" over which we can measure ethical systems, or even individual ethical decisions. You can't assign a score to your ethical system and a different score to mine. Our ethical systems are either self-consistent and reality-consistent or wrong, but everything else about them is subjective and individual and immeasurable.
>They have no way to financially catch up with the rest of the world even though they shared their tribal knowledge 10, 20, or 50 years ago.
This has nothing to do with ethics. This is a problem (my opinion, your opinion) with capitalism. Capitalism is great for rapidly improving material conditions through specialization and trade, but, this is a huge problem. If wealth is very unequally distributed, trade between poors stops. To make capitalist / free market systems work beyond basic materialism, we need robust redistribution of wealth mechanisms, or the whole "game" grinds to a halt.
>civilization as a whole hasn't really cared about this.
Nor can it / "should" it. Wtf does this have to do with anything? This isn't an ethical question. It's not a civilization-wide decision. It's a collection of smaller decisions made by people and small groups of people. Why are you bringing this up?
>And even if you have this person a job, for life let's say, what's to stop them from becoming corrupt? What's to stop bribes or threats from happening? Who should pick this person? We've tried to do it to some extent with the United Nations, but you can easily see how effective they are when things like Ukraine rolls around.
Why are you talking about one person? You find the cheapest / least interested person or group of people for the specific decision in question, to improve ethicality / neutrality of decisions, and to reduce moral hazard.
>It's another reason why there can be no such thing as a disinterested party when it comes to humanity.
But there's no reason to find a disinterested party when it comes to humanity. Humanity doesn't make any decisions as a group.
>It is just another reason why you have to move beyond the earth of you wish to evaluate the ethics of the earth.
Again, what's the reason for "evaluating the ethics of the earth"? The point in this conversation is to make more ethical decisions, which is easily accomplished by outsourcing them to disinterested third parties. The original premise, making AI ethical, is unimportant, because that simply means making an AI's ethics align with a particular BI, which is meaningless, because ethics are subjective and individual.
>I was trying to make a cheeky comment on humanity and describe a wish for something that could never happen.
What wish is that?
Human ethics should be monitored by disinterested third parties, more of the time, because it will improve the neutrality / ethicality of decisions, which will make the world a better place.
I don't get why you're stuck on this idea that one singular third party must monitor all of humanity / civilization as a whole, at once. What good is that wish? That's why I originally replied, that I get your cheap joke, but this is actually a very good idea, one we already implement, and that we should implement more of, to make the world better by making more ethical decisions.
Shadowkiller00 t1_jcd9ten wrote
>What wish is that?
I'm expressing a desire to have aliens come judge us as a species. That's it. That's all I'm saying. I can't be wrong about it because it's a wish and a silly one at that. You can argue all day that we can and should do it ourselves, that my desire doesn't make sense because that isn't the way ethics work, that my definitions are wrong, but that has nothing to do with anything I'm saying.
I literally don't have to read a single other word you said because everything you are saying is irrelevant.
bound4mexico t1_jce0mez wrote
>I'm expressing a desire to have aliens come judge us as a species. That's it. That's all I'm saying.
Ok. What you actually said was
>human ethics should be monitored by an uninterested third party.
and they are, all the time.
>I can't be wrong about it because it's a wish and a silly one at that.
Indeed. What I've clashed with you over is not that wish, but all the other things you've said.
>I literally don't have to read a single other word you said because everything you are saying is irrelevant.
lol, nice try. You're mimicking me, but there's no meaning in what you're saying. What I wrote is relevant. The wish is irrelevant. The idea that a single person be hired to judge ethics is irrelevant, yet you repeatedly fixated on it. The idea that all of humanity ought be judged on all their ethics at once is irrelevant, yet you repeatedly fixated on it. The idea that humans ought to be more ethical by outsourcing decisions to disinterested third parties is relevant. We're discussing it. You brought it up (you said nothing about aliens in the OP).
You don't have to read a single word I write because you're free, but the words I write are relevant, whether you read them or not.
Shadowkiller00 t1_jce3t74 wrote
Since you get to decide what I'm saying, how about I decide what you said.
>Let an uninterested (human) third party select the ethical thing, and then (all first) parties are pre-bound to abide its decision.
See you said "AN uninterested (human)". This implies one person. I only fixated on the words you said.
>I'm expressing a desire to have aliens come judge us as a species. That's it. That's all I'm saying.
>Ok. What you actually said was
>Human ethics should be monitored by an uninterested third party.
It's weird. It's almost like the first time I said it, you didn't comprehend what I said so I followed it up by clarifying. You parroting my words back to me and clarifying that you don't comprehend that the second part is a clarification only proves that you have no idea what I am talking about.
Nothing you say is relevant because we are having two completely different conversations. I'm having one where I explain to you what I mean, and you are having one where you are off in the field preaching on a soap box about a related but otherwise irrelevant subject. The fact that you want your words to be important doesn't make them relevant to the fact that I want aliens to judge humans.
bound4mexico t1_jce7qze wrote
> Since you get to decide what I'm saying
I don't. I quoted you directly.
>you said "AN uninterested (human)".
No. I said "an uninterested (human) party. And (human) parties can be one or more people. It in NO WAY "implies one person".
>I'm having one where I explain to you what I mean
You're having one where you change the meaning of what you say, NOT explaining what you mean. There are no aliens in the OP, that's a change in meaning, NOT a clarification of meaning.
>I want aliens to judge humans.
Yes. You've already said this (but didn't say this in your OP).
Most aliens that would judge humans aren't disinterested third parties, though. And what you said was
>Human ethics should be monitored by an uninterested third party.
Which they already often are, and ought to be even moreso.
The third party can be a single person, but it's often multiple people. Juries, the supreme court, district courts, panels, subcommittees, etc.
Shadowkiller00 t1_jcemk69 wrote
>No. I said "an uninterested (human) party. And (human) parties can be one or more people. It in NO WAY "implies one person".
So wait, what you said CAN mean one person? What? No way! So the way I read it is completely legit? Why are you correcting me? Is it because I'm not reading what you mean?
It's almost like the person who reads what is written can interpret a sentence differently than the person who wrote the sentence intended. Then the person who wrote it can choose to clarify that sentence later, and the person who read it can't really argue because it's the person who wrote the sentence that knows what they were trying to say regardless of how successful they were in saying it in the first place.
Can I make this any clearer?
Okay I'll try to explain this like I am talking to a child. I'm trying to show you an example of me doing to you what you are doing to me. When I originally read your comment, my brain automatically interpreted it as a single person because it is a legitimate way to read the sentence. It was only upon you being confused as to why I kept bringing it up that I finally went back and reread what you wrote and realized that I made a mistake in my interpretation of what you said. It doesn't technically matter because I was only saying one person because I thought you had said one person and I easily could rewrite everything I said previous to now in reference to a group and it would still be just the same.
Now I'm using this as an example to try to get you to reflect upon the fact that a reader can make a mistake with understanding what the writer meant. I'm not trying to say that all writers are perfect, perhaps I could have written my original statement better just like you could have used slightly different wording or punctuation in an attempt to avoid what turned out to be my mistake. But I spent a mere 2 seconds crafting my poor wording while never for a second believing that a single person would care for a moment what I wrote, much less have a long form argument with me about what I meant. Even our initial repartee was mostly me being confused about why there was a problem alongside the fact that we disagree on some basic tenets of ethics. Once I realized why there was a problem in interpretation, I have stalwartly focused on trying to clarify so that you may go back and reread my original statement in the way I intended.
You disagree with me on certain foundational concepts of ethics and the definition of disinterested. That's fine. You said it yourself that ethics are subjective, and I agreed on that, which means that neither of us can be objectively right or wrong. All of that disagreement was just a sidetrack because I never wanted to end up in that conversation in the first place. I only wanted to be a bit silly, have a soft chuckle to myself, and move on with my life. I've got nothing else left to say, and if you still don't get it, it isn't because I didn't try.
I'm incapable of letting anyone else have the last word. It's a failing I have. So if you'd like to be the better person, just quietly move on. If you are also incapable, then either block me or say whatever it is you think you haven't already said and I'll block you. I hate getting to that point in a conversation, but you have shown no signs of wanting to end this peacefully.
bound4mexico t1_jcg0drw wrote
> So wait, what you said CAN mean one person? What? No way! So the way I read it is completely legit? Why are you correcting me? Is it because I'm not reading what you mean?
Party CAN mean one person, or multiple people. You are wrong to fixate on it as ONLY meaning one person. Human is an adjective in my sentence. There is NO valid (English) interpretation of my statement as referring to a human as a noun, which WOULD imply singularity. The way you "read" it (took it out of context) is completely illegit. You removed the noun "party" intentionally, and pretended that (human) was the noun, not an adjective.
>It's almost like the person who reads what is written can interpret a sentence differently than the person who wrote the sentence intended.
Only sometimes. Only in legitimate English ways. If you don't say aliens, then aliens are not implied by "third party". That's not clarification. That's a complete change in meaning.
>I'm trying to show you an example of me doing to you what you are doing to me.
But you're failing. You're NOT quoting me with full context. I quoted you with full context. Your OP in no way even implies aliens. That's not me interpreting what you wrote differently. That's not me interpreting what you wrote in an illegitimate interpretation (not allowed by rules of English). You chopped off "party", which was the noun in my statement, which isn't singular, and you fixated on the POSSIBILITY of a party being singular as if it was a CERTAINTY. That's the difference.
>When I originally read your comment, my brain automatically interpreted it as a single person because it is a legitimate way to read the sentence.
Yes. It's possible for a third (human) party to be a single person. But you fixated on that possibility as if it were impossible for a third party to be any more than a single person. That's the problem. It's foolish for a single person to judge all of humanity's ethics at once. What would that even mean?
>I finally went back and reread what you wrote and realized that I made a mistake in my interpretation of what you said.
Thank you.
>I easily could rewrite everything I said previous to now in reference to a group and it would still be just the same.
No. It goes from completely impractical to quite practical, if you use groups of people as third parties instead of an individual.
>Even the idea of taking someone and separating them from humanity so that they could be uninterested could be considered unethical.
Makes no sense, and is entirely based on your errant interpretation. We both agree that this idea is unethical. But, it's not what I said, and it's not even implied by what I said.
>My point is that, to judge the entire human civilization as a whole, you must find someone 100% disinterested.
Is wrong. You don't have to find anyone 100% disinterested. Just someone mostly disinterested, enough disinterest to be useful as a mediator between the first (human) parties.
>And even if you have this person a job, for life let's say, what's to stop them from becoming corrupt? What's to stop bribes or threats from happening? Who should pick this person?
Also makes no sense if rewritten from individual to group. There is no person or group that needs to have this job for life. You get the cheapest, disinterested-enough people, least likely to be corrupted to serve for the appropriate ethical judgements. We already do this with jury selection. What's to stop juries from becoming corrupt? What's to stop bribes or threats from happening? Who should pick these people? The answers are already existent. We should use disinterested (obv not 100%, because that doesn't exist) people to monitor human ethics, just like we already do, more of the time, for more decisions, because it makes the decisions better, which makes the world better.
>you could have used slightly different wording or punctuation in an attempt to avoid what turned out to be my mistake.
No. I used (human) to explicitly rule out, and prevent you from mistaking my statement as allowing for third parties to be any AI or inhuman BI. It's not possible for anyone who speaks English to interpret (human) as the noun. Party is the noun (or third party). It's entirely your mistake. You misinterpreted my statement in an illegitimate (by English rules) way. Human can't be the noun there.
>You disagree with me on certain foundational concepts of ethics and the definition of disinterested.
Not sure what those are. Pretty sure we agree about disinterested, and both have explicitly stated that there's no such thing as a perfectly, 100% disinterested person for judging ethics of other people. But that doesn't matter. Because a very disinterested person is still useful for judging ethics of other people.
>I have stalwartly focused on trying to clarify
No. You tried to change, not clarify, the meaning of your statement.
>human ethics should be monitored by an uninterested third party
is true, and I agree with it.
>I[...] desire to have aliens come judge us as a species.
is NOT a clarification of
>human ethics should be monitored by an uninterested third party
It's a completely different statement. Quit your bullshit.
>you have shown no signs of wanting to end this peacefully.
There is no violence happening here. WTF are you talking about? Discussing things with words is peaceful. Violence is un-peaceful. Don't threaten to block me because you don't like having your failings pointed out to you. That's weak.
Shadowkiller00 t1_jcgk4t5 wrote
You have made it clear that you are incapable of adjusting your world view to allow for others views to be different from your own. Blocked.
MamaMiaPizzaFina t1_jc9p8zu wrote
Compromise, humans will write AI ethics and AI will write human ethics
iamtomorrowman t1_jc9d4pl wrote
what sort of job is that exactly?
Shadowkiller00 t1_jc9khi0 wrote
Part computer science. Part philosophy. All trying to appease our new AI overlords.
ILL_BE_WATCHING_YOU t1_jcb6c4j wrote
AI ethicists will probably be disproportionately unethical, given how "moral authority" type jobs such as teacher, police officer, therapist, etc. tend to attract dark triad types. Wouldn't surprise me if the majority ended up using AI to ghostwrite ethics papers and whatnot.
zenzukai t1_jcd8vcz wrote
Honestly it's pretty easy.
1 - don't damage people
2 - prevent damage to people
3 - always assume people are dumb and unethical
Shadowkiller00 t1_jcda64e wrote
And that is the basis of all the AI take over the world and murder everyone for the good of humanity stories.
zenzukai t1_jcdc4iv wrote
Because every story needs conflict, and most stories about AI are about conflicts with AI.
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