[alicebot-aiethics] ethical questions

[Dr. Rich Wallace]

Thank you for breathing life into aiethics, Michael!

Just to clarify one point, the A. I. Foundation and Pandorabots are two
distinct corporate entities.  I have absolutely no control over the
decisions made by Pandorabots with regard to what they put in the HTML on
their website.  You might want to try cross-posting to pandorabots-general
(I know I am giving you the mailing list runaround :-) and ask Doubly
Aimless what he thinks.  For that matter, if you are concerned about a
specific therapist bot like iTherapist.com, you can contact the botmaster
for that bot and check out his or her disclaimer.

I do however have some control over what goes on the alicebot.org website,
and in that context yoir remarks are duly noted here.


>
>
>
>
>
> There are some other things about pandorabots the website that I want to
> discuss with you.  First, if  anyone is using code from other people's
> robots without notifying them, I think that is at
>
> the very least unethical, and possibly illegal. Even if you
>
> are only using the interaction logs from the clients of other
>
> people's robots, that still raises some ethical questions.
>
>
>
> Second,  I have noticed that whenever a client talks to a
>
> robot the conversation is recorded on the pandorabots
>
> website.  The clients do not know that someone has the
>
> ability to observe their conversation with the robot.  The
>
> client is under the impression that he or she is having a
>
> private conversation with the robot "therapist". I  believe
>
> that for anyone to observe this conversation without the
>
> knowledge of the client would be considered an invasion of
>
> privacy by most people.  I think that Dr. Wallace should put a
>
> disclaimer somewhere on the website stating that these
>
> conversations are being recorded, and can be viewed by other
>
> people. In other words, the client has the right to be
>
> informed that he or she is not engaging in a private
>
> conversation. You may say that the client is not identified,
>
> however there is no reason to believe that the client would
>
> not identify himself at some point during the conversation.
>
> In fact, most people do identify themselves in some way when
>
> talking to the robot.
>
>
>
> I hope you don't take these comments the wrong way. I just
>
> wanted to point out that the technology that Dr. Wallace has created
>
> raises some ethical questions that perhaps he may not have
>
> considered.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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-- 
Dr. Rich
W A L L A C E
ALICE A.I. Foundation
drwallace@www.alicebot.org
Winner, Loebner Prize 2000, 2001, 2004