[HN Gopher] Could AI Outshine Us in Ethical Decision-Making?
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       Could AI Outshine Us in Ethical Decision-Making?
        
       Author : james-bcn
       Score  : 10 points
       Date   : 2024-03-09 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.beyond2060.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.beyond2060.com)
        
       | bediger4000 wrote:
       | I think this is a given. Due to their mechanical nature, AI will
       | be able to make logical, instead of emotional, decisions. Because
       | they are machines, and therefore cannot own property, especially
       | not Intellectual Property, they won't have economic incentives to
       | cheat and steal, or even be bribed. Logical decisions, made
       | without conflict of interest is pretty much the definition of
       | ethical.
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | Computer programs are logical; AI can write programs, but to
         | the extent they implement pure logic they are too fragile for
         | real world scenarios, and to the extent that they are resilient
         | to real world nuances they aren't what most people would call
         | pure logic.
         | 
         | I think part of the problem with Kant (and indeed also with
         | Utilitarianism) is that the philosophers tried to formalise it
         | logically without fully grasping the messiness of the world.
         | 
         | Unfortunately, there are game theory reasons to expect cheating
         | and accepting bribes even in AI, and if they learn from humans
         | then there are those problems plus automatically inferring and
         | reproducing the conflicts of interest of the humans it learns
         | from.
        
         | falcor84 wrote:
         | >Because they are machines, and therefore cannot own property
         | 
         | I don't see anything stopping any random Silicon Valley bro
         | from registering a company and setting up an AI as the de facto
         | CEO, which in practice would be almost identical with the
         | company's "legal person", and owning whatever the AI "decides".
        
       | seeknotfind wrote:
       | Maybe Kant would say you should refuse to tell the axe murderer
       | the location instead of lying.
        
       | spondylosaurus wrote:
       | > If all AI systems have a suitably trained ethical reasoning
       | module as part of their design, perhaps AI systems have the
       | potential to make us better people and the world a better place.
       | 
       | Okay, but who's configuring the ethical reasoning module? Because
       | moral philosophy is definitely not a "solved" problem or we
       | wouldn't still have people arguing about it.
       | 
       | I _am_ a consequentialist, but this essay makes it seem like
       | deontologists don 't exist anymore. Except they do! Lots of
       | people really love Kant, for some reason!
        
         | tangjurine wrote:
         | I don't think we need to "solve morality", just having the
         | decision makers not make obviously corrupt and stupid decisions
         | and then shamelessly lie about it.
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-09 23:01 UTC)