User:CharlesGillingham/More/Ethics of AI

Dangers of AI R&N p. 960

Arthur C. Clarke, who's predictions were so completely wrong about artificial intelligence, predicted that "
 * People might lose their jobs
 * People might have too much (or two little free time)

Topics that this article must cover:
 * Dystopian scenarios, such as published by Bill Joy. The danger of autonomous robots to public safety. The threat to privacy of AI programs that trawl the web.

Creating AIs that behave ethically. Several dystopian scenarios of malicious AI programs. Solzhenitsyn's First Circle -- speech understanding program used to spy on people McCorduck, p. 308
 * PRIVACY: The threat to privacy when AI programs can monitor every phone conversation, read every email and report back to their owners. The ability of AI programs to aid fascist governments to efficiently suppress dissent and attack their enemies.


 * WAR: AI as a dangerous weapon without sufficient oversight. The specter of robotic armies controlled by programs that may contain bugs.
 * Bill Joy published a dystopian scenario April 2000 Wired Magazine.

Unexpected consequences:
 * Russell and Norvig mention that people might lose their jobs, or have too much time on their hands.
 * Joseph Weizenbaum's arguments that artificial intelligence research undermines human dignity. He reacts with horror to the idea of robot therapist or nursemaid. The difficulty of feeling empathy for (and from) a machine, the inevitable alienation and frustration.

More:
 * Sexual

From McCorduck:

Dystopian
p, 494-501

Bill Joy's Dystopian Critique p, 494-496 Bill Joy, April 2000 Issue of Wired (magazine)

Against various doomsday scenarios, McCarthy responds that they are all too remote to concern us. AI will not sneak up on us; we have plenty of time. "We won't know enough to regulate until we see what it looks like," (M, 2003. Q in M, p. 499) he wrote. "Correct decsions will require an intense effort that connot be mobilized to consider an eventuality that is still remote." (M, 1976. Q in M p. 380)

In general
Richard Feynmann, thinking about the unexpected consequences of technology, wrote of a man he came across in buddhist temple who told him "to every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell" Q in M p. 499

"Both AI's loudest public champiaons and its loudest public enemies raise expectations or fears that are, to put it generously, premature." p. 511

McCorduck, for example, suggests dozens of scenarios that have no been suggested. An evangelical prohibition, akin to George Bush's crackdown on stem-cell research, which leads to Indian and Chinese supremacy in AI. Or, consider the possibility that extremely powerful AI systems are built, but, for economic reasons, they are only used to solve specific problems for business or government. p. 516-517.

Weizenbuam's Critique
p. 356-357 ✅

History (p. 362-363)
 * 1972 "On the Impact of Computers on Society" paper
 * 1973 Public debate with Colby (unfortunately gives people impression that this is personal
 * 1976 Computer Power and Human Reason the book

According to M, it has three main points: pp. 356 & 374-376
 * 1) There are domains where computer are not to intrude (jobs that require love or care)
 * 2) Where computers would represent an attack on life iteslef
 * 3) Where the effect are irreverible and not entirely forseeable (Buchanan points out anything interesting will have these properties)
 * 4) When invovles respect and love (McCorduck counters that, speaking for women and minorites "I'd rather take my changes with an impartial computer.")
 * 5) Most of the work in the field is not science but technique. (performed by pathological and megalomaniacal hackers) (McCorduck points to the Nobel, Turing Award, etc)
 * 6) We've embraced the machine metaphor as a description of ourselves and our intsitutions much too readilyu, that in this embrace we're in acute dange of uielding what is essentitally human. An "atrohpy of the human spirit'' that comes from thinking of ourselves as computers. (M replies that there wasn't any Eden where we had self-respect or respect for each other.)

M describes the books as "a cry from the heart" p. 374

My thought on three: clearly we are more awed by knowledge than mystery. Anyone who has spiritual bent tends to fill each mystery with knowledge, special knowledge, acquired in moments of insight. What we regret is not the loss of mystery, it is the loss of this special knowledge we already had. And the introduction of new mysteries where there were certainties. The mystery argument against science is stupid.

Colby dispute again. p. 363-366 "What really troubles him is what he call the con job, that DOCTOR represented having the potential to help psychiatric patients. " M compares it to the introduction of drug-based psychiatry. Colby argues that there aren't enough psychiatrists to go around, and argues "to not explore the use of the best tools and intrucments aviaable is immoral since it violates a basic principlce of the helping professions whiwh are devoted to the relief of suffereinfg of everyone." Q in M p. 365

McCarthy's reply: "When moralizing is both vehement and vauge, it invites authoriatrain abuse either by existing authority or by new political movements."

Joshua Lederberg (who worked on DENDRAL), agreed that (as M puts it) "world knowledge underlying human understanding ... needs the life-long experience of having been human" (although he disagreed that brain is unknowable). p. 371