[aiethics] Let's begin...

[Ing. Pedro E. Colla]

Alicebot AI Ethics Committee - http://www.alicebot.org


Hi All,

I could understand the need for this forum to be very open,
actually I didn't meant for it to be closed or restricted, but to
have "something" in terms of policy to start with, sort of a
base declaration of principles to start with, even with the
understanding that could be reviewed at any time given the
need to.

Not to set a clear direction but just a general direction
with latitude to diverge.

One thing is to declare we're a Global Village, which is
a fair statement, chic, fashionable and politically correct;
and over anything else very cheap and harmless to
declare.

Another thing is to actually behave like one.

Ethic systems do differ, a whole lot; key is to find out
what the common denominators are in order to try to
address them.

It's true that the technollogy current status put far ahead of
us any credibly scenario where bots takes all over the place;
which is very fortunate since the current technollogy status
put us far behind of any chance to do anything about.

Roger Pensrose sustain on his "The Emperors New Mind"
that the Turing test would be highly unethical if ever any
artificial being wins it; I concur with the corollary of that
reasoning but still working towards a technollogy that is
the one I feel closest to reach that goal. Does that makes
me an unethical person?

Some a decade ago I participated on a corporate technollogy forum
when the appointed guru predicted that by some 2030-2040
to turn off a machine would have legal and ethical implications;
I laugh then.

But today it's a penal crime on many countries to conduct
actions that makes machines unavailable as many virii
related trials dictated (i.e. US vs Morris) and surely the
charges might be hefty if the subject machine is under some
key civil services duty. So I don't laugh anymore.

One almost funny thing is that if a person makes some statements
contained in the standard AIML set will commit
(at least in technical law terms) a federal offense in many
countries of what we call the Western civilization, not to
mention a severely punished offense on some
islamic countries. Should we address that? (please refer
on my comments of cheap declaration of being a Global
Village while being clueless on what it means and implies).

This nonsensical navigation is just a tiny example of the kind
of boundless navigation this topic might encourage; and not
working with some North might lead us to release vast amount
of energies and still by the time the AI movie is released not
be prepared any better than today to answer even the most
basic questions (mention the AI movie just because Brenda
mentioned it and it's a good example of a concrete thing
that might require some pragmatism to be addressed).

Don't think for a minute it's feasible to install an agenda on
this discussion, much less a timeline; a "master plan to
develop an ethics strategy" sounds like a joke to me; but
at least some overall statement of the things that are our
foundation (the so called policy of the beginning) and a
general outline of what we want to accomplish.

One handy thing about ethical systems is that aren't usually
enforceable (otherwise they are a law system); and I said
it's handy because we could not possibly enforce it from
the technical side at this point.

In many respects we'll be facing in the years ahead the kind
of ethics dilemmas experienced by nuclear physics in the
40/50's (Dr. Oppenheimer and Dr. Shakarov memories are
quite enlighting on that regard); perhaps not in the horror
and ephic nature of the evil our artifacts might produce
(which in the foreseable future would be of far less harm
than the modest atomic or nuclear artifact) but in the sense
on how the usage of a given technology might contradict
the most inner beliefs (and thus ethics systems) of their
creators.

But this would mean a nice example that once creators
allows the genie got loose out of the bottle they could not
control it any further; but at least we should be empowered
to stick a tag to the genie that says that certain usages of
it contradict the creator's set of beliefs; if not, for the peace
of mind of the creator (and quite frankly, to start putting some
humble legal shield on the unforeseen and undesired
consequences of our work, the ... hmm... "lateral damage").

Perhaps a good starting point, albeit not a novel one, are
the Dr. Assimov "law of robotics"; since they could not be
enforced it should be renamed by now as "ethic set of
robotics" but behind the initial attempt to consider it a
bad joke and laugh it's the closest thing I could imagine
to address a common denominator of most ethics
systems I know (don't pretend to know all of them of
course and conflicts with some I know).

It's small, it's really depth once you stop laughing, it has
a very huge leverage on people already and it's ellegant
on it's implications, and to the best extend of my knowledge
it's on the public domain.  It's a good set of intentions to start
with I believe.

Noel, You wanted free spinning nonsense? Guess you got it :-).

Best Regards, Pedro.

Ing. Pedro E. Colla
Adrogue-BA
Argentina
----- Original Message -----
From: Noel Bush
To: Alicebot AI Ethics Committee
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 6:24 AM
Subject: RE: [aiethics] Let's begin...


Alicebot AI Ethics Committee - http://www.alicebot.org


Pedro wrote:

> I think a clear statement of policy is needed from the foundation
> before to start on the purpose and goals of this forum in order to
> refine it and elaborate on details.
>
> Otherwise the debates might lead to nowhere.

Hey Pedro, I agree with you w/r/t other committees, but I think that the
ethics committee is a real exception to this. I think that this is one =
where
the floor is wide open, and should remain so for some time. I think that =
the
AI ethics discussion will work *most* fruitfully as a sort of =
free-for-all,
where all manner of messages fly about, ranging from paranoiac fantasies
about bots taking over the world to carefully reasoned arguments, heated
personal arguments, and the whole nine yards. I think that a discussion =
of
ethics can't be reasonably constrained by anything! This is the place to
"let it all hang out". If the ethics mailing list were a room, I would =
put a
big "BEWARE" sign on the door. This ought to be the list that will flood
your mailbox with hundreds of messages a day!!! :-)

Really, I'm serious. This is the kind of topic that stirs up lots of =
energy
in people. Everyone has opinions about ethics. Every opinion has some
implicit ethics. Discussions of ethics are by nature irrational and
anarchic. I may be subverting the Chair by saying all this :-), but I =
would
encourage a completely "rhizomatic" (cf. Deleuze & Guattari or
www.rhizome.org if you prefer) discussion on this list. I think this is =
an
"open space".

"Open space": Rather than getting myself a "proper" education, I spent =
my
meager years of higher education in a zany and credentialless =
experimental
department of tiny Bard College in a program called "Music Program =
Zero".
The entire curriculum of this department depended entirely on
self-organization. A key component of the program was something called a
"commonspace", which was a weekly meeting open to the whole community
(meaning students and anyone) in which people would appear and, um, do
something. I say "um, do something" because in this space there was =
rarely a
fixed agenda. One time I arrived early and brought gigantic sheets of =
black
plastic which I used to turn the whole space into a lightless cave. =
Everyone
who arrived was greeted with a warning sign on the door, and when they
entered they spent 2 hours sitting in the dark with the complete =
recordings
of Blind Willie Johnson playing at maximum volume. There was no =
discussion
afterwards, no metatext to give everyone a set of instructions about how =
to
think or what to think about. Afterwards people were variously angry,
befuddled, inspired, blase, etc. The professor branded me a sadist. My =
aim
had simply been to create a very immersive listening experience. The =
social
aspects were frightening, sitting in the utter darkness with strangers
listening to this music that covers a wide range of intensities and
topicalities and banalities and profundities within a very narrow sonic
expressive bandwidth. I'm not sure what the outcome of this was -- I =
mean
that nothing in future discussions was directly "traceable" to =
particular
"inputs" from this event. But in its radical refusal to be explicit in =
its
discourse and total in its ontological prioritization of *experience* =
over
description it typified the work of that program.

There were for sure ethical issues being addressed in work like that. In
fact many "issues" were addressed -- also a fair amount of time wasted =
--
but the absence of any regulated process with an associated =
hard-and-fast
risk/reward ratio brought with it the possibility, occasionally =
realized, of
making more profound progress than any academic structure would permit.

On the other hand, as the person responsible for organizing the =
day-to-day
development work of a company that had about ten product development =
efforts
and numerous customer projects going on simultaneously, and a
frequently-shifting set of priorities for the same, I had to organize
development team work in a way that would produce real results, and =
fast,
and within budgetary constraints. Never mind that most of those results
never got out the door; nonetheless work had to get done and it did. =
What I
frequently noticed in those experiences was that many good ideas had to =
be
tossed out the window. Part of my job, in fact, was to try to make
on-the-spot evaluations of whether the idea someone was proposing was
relevant to the task at hand, and if not, to quickly "can it" before
resources allocated to the project were wasted. I found this a
not-so-pleasant task, because in the corporate setting there is usually =
no
outlet for creative energies.

Very little of interest was addressed, consequently, except a business =
plan.

Alice is a unique situation because everybody involved is doing it =
freely,
purely on the basis of self-motivation. Nobody is employed by Alice Inc. =
We
still have the same need to channel energies, though. The architecture
mailing list became moderated precisely because it rapidly deformed into =
a
collective stream of consciousness in which few ideas were traceable, =
very
little of an agenda clear. Even in its reincarnation it's still bursting
with ideas and will need to have a more explicit agenda set soon.

But the ethics list is, I think, the place for a lot of that "excess"
energy. Most of the discussions we can have about ethical issues are =
purely
speculative. We are not at this moment threatened by Matrix-like =
extinction
from superbots. It is still possible to slam the door when the Grim
Singularity comes calling. As Rich said in our published conversation, =
there
are far more serious and pressing issues in the world today than what to =
do
about bots. That doesn't mean this conversation isn't interesting; quite =
the
contrary, as evidenced. And when bot technology becomes more =
sophisticated
and more pervasive, we may indeed have something to worry about. In the
meantime, this is a great place to exercise our minds, our capacities =
for
imagining all kinds of weird possibilities, even to expose our fantasies
about what those of us interested in bots are really after. From all of =
this
self-organization and mutual titillation and provocation and so on ought =
to
come not hard and fast results, but attitudes -- attitudes with clearer
shapes, deeper convictions.

Noel