Category: Technology

J’atorg struggled along on his motile pods, wheezing badly as his air sacs fought with the new atmosphere. He cursed the humans, invoking the gods of his people. Reflecting, he cursed the humans by invoking their gods. The gods of his people had proven weak: the bipeds had come and were remaking his world to suit them, proving their gods are stronger. The humans said it would take a long time for the world to fully change, but J’atorg could already see, taste and smell the differences. He did not know who he hated more: the hard-eyed humans who were destroying his world or the soft-eyed humans who spewed words about “rights”, “morality” and “lawsuits” while urging patience. He knew his people would die, aside from those the humans kept as curiosities or preserved to assuage their conscience with cruel pity.

 

Terraforming is transforming a planet to make it more earthlike. In science fiction, the goal of terraforming is to make an alien world suitable for human habitation by altering its ecosystem. Interestingly, the ruling classes are busy seeing to the reverse terraforming of our home world, making it less habitable for our species. Since this process would radically change a world, terraforming does raise ethical concerns. Conveniently, the ethical discussion that follows applies to both terraforming and reverse terraforming.

From a moral standpoint, the clearest scenario is when a lifeless, uninhabited planet is terraformed. If Mars is lifeless and uninhabited, it would fall into this category. If there are no beings on a world, there would be no rights violated and no harms inflicted. As such, terraforming such a planet would seem morally acceptable.

One obvious counter is to argue that a planet has moral status of its own, distinct from that of the beings that might inhabit it. Intuitively, the burden of proof for this status would rest on those who make this claim since inanimate objects do not seem to be the sort of entities that can be wronged.

A second counter is to advance potentiality arguments, somewhat akin to those used in the abortion debate. If a planet might someday give rise to beings who would have moral status, then terraforming the planet would be wrong because it would prevent them from arising. After all, the scientific account of life on earth involves it arising from non-life by natural processes. If an uninhabited world is terraformed, the possible inhabitants that might have arisen from the world would never be.

While arguments from potentiality tend to be weak, they are not without appeal. Naturally, the moral concern for the world should be proportional to how likely it is that it would produce inhabitants. If this is unlikely, then terraforming would be of less moral concern. However, if the world has considerable potential, then the possibility of moral harm is greater. To reverse the situation, we would not have wanted earth to be transformed by aliens if doing so would have prevented our eventual evolution. As such, to act morally, we would need to treat other worlds as we want our world to be treated. That said, our ruling class is ensuring that our world is undergoing reverse terraforming.

The standard counter to potentiality arguments is that mere potential does not morally outweigh the actual. This is used to justify the use of resources now even when doing so will make them unavailable to future generations. It is also the reasoning that is sometimes used to morally justify abortion, with the actual person outweighing the potential person. This view does, of course, have its own problems and there are serious arguments regarding the status of the potential versus that of the actual.

If a world has life or is otherwise inhabited (I do not want to assume that all inhabitants must be alive in the way we understand it), then the morality of terraforming would be much more complicated. After all, the inhabitants of a world would seem likely to have moral status. Not surprisingly, the ethics of terraforming an inhabited world are like those of altering an environment on earth, such as building houses in what was a forest. Naturally enough, the stock arguments about species extinction would apply here. As on earth, the more complex the inhabitants, the greater the moral concern—assuming that moral status is linked to complexity. After all, we do not balk at eliminating viruses or bacteria but are sometimes concerned when higher forms of life are at stake, such as owls or our fellow humans.

If the inhabitants are people, then the matter is even more complicated and would bring into play the usual arguments about how people should be treated. Despite the ethical similarities to these smaller scale scenarios, there are some important differences when it comes to terraforming ethics.

One main difference is one of scale: bulldozing a forest to build condos versus changing an entire planet for colonizing. The fact that the entire world is involved seems morally significant—assuming size matters.

There is also another difference, namely that the world is a different world. On earth, we can at least present some an ownership claim over our home world. Asserting ownership over an alien world is more problematic, especially if it is already inhabited. But it must be noted that there are moral arguments against claiming to own parts of our earth.

Of course, it can be countered that we are inhabitants of this universe and hence have as good a claim to alien worlds as our own—after all, it is our universe. Also, there are all sorts of clever moral justifications for ownership that people have developed, and these can be applied to ownership of alien worlds. After all, the moral justifications for taking land from other humans can be inflicted on aliens. To be consistent we would have to accept that the same arguments would morally justify aliens doing the same to us. Or we could simply go with a galactic state of nature where profit is the measure of right and matters are decided by the sword. In that case, we must hope that we have the biggest sword or that the aliens have better ethics than we do.

 

 

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Hero of Alexandria (born around 10 AD) is credited with developing the first steam engine, the first vending machine and the first known wind powered machine (a musical organ). Given the revolutionary impact of the steam engine centuries later, it might be wondered why the Greeks did not use these inventions in their economy. While some claim the Greeks did not see the implications, others claim the decision was based on concerns over social stability. The development of steam or wind power on a significant scale would have displaced slave labor. This could have caused social unrest or even contributed to a revolution.

While what prevented the Greeks from developing steam or wind power can still be debated, an anecdote about Roman emperor Vespasian was clear about his opposition to a labor-saving construction device: he stated he must always ensure the workers earned enough money to buy food and this device would put them out of work.

While labor saving technology has advanced dramatically since Hero and Vespasian, the basic questions remain the same. These include the question of whether to adopt the technology and questions about the impact of such technology on specific individuals and society.

Obviously, each labor-saving advancement must (by its nature) eliminate some jobs and create some initial unemployment. For example, when factory robots are introduced to make cars, then human laborers will be displaced from those jobs. Obviously, this initial impact tends to be negative on the displaced workers while generally being positive for the employers.

While Vespasian expressed concerns about the impact of such devices, a commonly held view about more recent advances is that they have had a general positive impact. The usual narrative is that these advances replaced the lower-paying (and often more dangerous or unrewarding) jobs with better jobs while providing more goods at a lower cost. So, while some individuals might suffer at the start, the invisible machine of the market would result in an overall increase in utility for society. Not everyone agrees with this narrative and people tend to fear most what the next innovation might inflict.

The positive narrative can be the foundation for a utilitarian moral argument in favor of labor-saving technology. The gist is that the overall increase in benefits outweighs the harms created. Thus, on utilitarian grounds, the elimination of these jobs by means of technology is morally acceptable. Naturally, each situation can be debated in terms of the benefits and the harms, but the basic moral reasoning seems solid. If the technological advance that eliminates jobs creates more good than harm for a society, then the advance seems morally acceptable.

Obviously, people can disagree about who they regard as counting morally and who they regard as not counting (or not counting as much). Obviously, a person who focuses on the impact on workers will often have a different view than someone most concerned with the employer.

Another concern is what purpose of such advances should be. From the standpoint of a typical employer, the end is obvious: reduce labor to reduce costs and thus increase profits (and reduce labor troubles). The ideal would, presumably, to replace any human whose job can be adequately done cheaper by a machine. Of course, there is an obvious concern: to make money a business needs customers who have money. So, if profit is a concern, there must always be some people who have an income and who are not replaced by unpaid machines. One possible pinnacle of this sort of system might consist of a business model in which one person owns machines that produce goods or services that are sold to other business owners. On this model, everyone is a business owner, and everyone is a customer. This path does, of course, have some dystopian options. For example, it is easy to imagine a world in which most people are displaced, unemployed or underemployed while a small elite enjoys a lavish lifestyle supported by automation and the poor. Well, more so than our current dystopian world.

A more utopian view, the Star Trek future, is that the end of automation is to eliminate boring, dangerous, and unfulfilling jobs to free human beings from the tyranny of imposed labor. This is the scenario that anarchists like Emma Goldman promised: people would do the work they loved, rather than laboring as servants to make others wealthy. This path also has some dystopian options, such as the gentle one of Wall E. One can also imagine less gentle dystopias in which having the machines do everything for us is a nightmare.

 

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Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) involves the surgical implantation of electrodes into the brain that, as the name indicates, stimulate the brain. The procedure is used to treat movement disorders and Tourette’s syndrome. It can also be used to treat neuropsychiatric disorders (such as PTSD).

From a moral standpoint, the use of DBS in treating such conditions is no more problematic than using surgery to repair a broken bone. If these were the only applications for DBS, then there would be no real moral concerns about the process. However, as is sometimes the case in medicine, there are potential applications that do raise moral concerns.

One matter for concern has been a philosophical problem for some time. To be specific, DBS can be used to stimulate the nucleus accumbens (a part of the brain associated with pleasure). While this can be used to treat depression, it can also (obviously) be used to create pleasure directly. Some might see it as a version of the infamous pleasure machine scenario of so many Ethics 101 classes. This is a technological upgrade to the classic pig objection most famously considered by J.S. Mill in his work on Utilitarianism. Thanks to these stock discussions, the ethical ground of pleasure implants is well covered (although, as always, there are no truly decisive arguments).

While the sci-fi/philosophy scenario of people in pleasure comas is interesting, what is more interesting is the ethics of DBS as a life-enhancer. That is, getting the implant not to use to excess or in place of “real” pleasure, but to make life a bit better. To use the obvious analogy, the excessive scenario is like drinking oneself into a stupor, while the life-upgrade would be like having a drink with dinner. On the face of it, it would be hard to object if the effect was simply to make a person feel a bit better about life—and it could even be argued that this would be preventative medicine. Just as person might be on medication to keep from developing high blood pressure or exercise to ward off diabetes, a person might get a brain boost to ward off potential depression. That said, there is a concern about abusing the technology (and the iron law of technology states that any technology that can be abused, will be abused).

Another area of concern is the use of DBS for enhancements. For example, if DBS can improve memory in Alzheimer’s patients, then perhaps it could do the same for healthy people. It is not difficult to imagine people seeking to boost their memory or other abilities through such technology. This, of course, is part of the broader topic of brain enhancements (which is part of the even more general topic of enhancements). As David Noonan has noted, DBS might become analogous to cosmetic or plastic surgery: what was once intended to treat serious injuries has also become an elective enhancement surgery. Just as people seek to enhance their appearance by surgery, it seems reasonable to believe that they might do so to enhance their mental abilities.

From a moral standpoint, there is the same concern that has long held about cosmetic surgery, namely the risk of harm when seeking enhancement. However, if enhancing one’s looks via surgery is morally acceptable, then enhancing one’s mood, memory and so on would be acceptable as well. In fact, it could be argued that such substantial improvements are more laudable than merely improving appearance.

There is also the stock moral concern with fairness: those who can afford such enhancements will have yet another advantage over those less well off, thus widening the chasm. This is a legitimate concern. But, aside from the nature of the specific advantage, nothing new morally. If it is acceptable for the wealthy to buy advantages in other ways, this should not be a special exception.

 

 

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In my previous essays I wrote about the sharing economy, focusing on regulations and taxes. In this essay I will cover resources (human and other). The new sharing economy is exemplified by companies such as Uber and Airbnb that organize transactions between individuals. In the case of Uber, people can sell rides in their own cars—without (as of this writing) all the usual costs and regulations of operating a cab. In the case of Airbnb, people can rent out property and (as of this writing) generally avoid the usual regulations associated with running a hotel.

For the people providing goods and services, the new sharing economy  is supposed to make it easier to earn money. In general, the new sharing economy involves three parties. The first is the person who provides the actual good (apartment, for example) or service (a ride to the airport, for example). The second is the person who uses the service and the third is the company that provides the organizing service. While this is an old model (people have long offered services and goods via things like newspaper ads), technology changed the scale of this once informal economy. It has also served to blur the traditional roles. Those who provide the goods and services are, it is often argued, not  employees of the organizing services and those using the goods and services are not exactly customers of the services. There are some advantages and some disadvantages to this.

In the case of those providing the services and goods, one obvious advantages is that they can make money. While they could do this without the organizing service, the service is supposed to make this easier and provides other advantages.

One of the advantages of not actually being an employee of the organizing services is that the provider has a degree of autonomy usually absent in the traditional employee-employer relationship. The provider can (within the constraints of economic need) work as little as desired and is free to stop at will. This autonomy appeals to some people—especially those looking for a more traditional job while making money to pay the bills. In some ways, the situation is somewhat like being a temp worker.

Of course, there are many disadvantages to being a provider. One is that there are typically no benefits and no job security. Also, the risks and costs all fall heavily on the provider. For example, if someone crashes into the company truck Sally is driving, then the company handles the matter. But, if Sally is driving for Uber and her car is hit, this is most likely going to work exactly as it would if Sally was just driving to Starbucks for a latte—that is, it is on her.

Another point of concern is that the organizer might be in the position to set rates or impose other limits—much like a traditional boss can. For example, Uber can set what drivers are paid.

But this is nothing new—people who do freelance work or are self-employed in the usual sense face all these problems. After all, being a worker in America always puts one at a disadvantage and being what amounts to a temp or freelancer can be even less optimal in terms of security and pay.

There are many advantages to the companies. One is that their workers are usually not considered employees. Another is that the worker, for the most part, also provide the essential resources like vehicles and property. While the companies do incur costs, they are able to avoid (or significantly reducing) the usual costs of running a business. For example, a hotel needs to have hotel employees and an actual hotel. Airbnb does not—the providers provide the services and buildings. As another example, a service that organizes drivers does not need to buy cars, maintain them or insure them—thus resulting in considerable savings relative to a company that must hire drivers as employees and buy vehicles.

In essence, the new sharing economy splits management from what would traditionally be the resources (human or otherwise) of a company. The organizer takes on the role of management while avoiding the need to have traditional human resources (beyond the administrative aspects of the business) and the need to have the material resources (beyond those needed for the administrative aspects).

Some companies do operate in something of a hybrid mode—having workers as well as material resources owned by the company while also having a sharing aspect to the business. This is a variation of the old model of a company hiring temp workers, freelancers and contractors.

This model can, apparently, be profitable—in large part due to matters of scale. After all, getting a slice of thousands of sales can result in a profit. Also, many of these companies benefit from tech inflation—the almost magical overvaluation of companies with business models based on the right sort of tech. That said, Uber famously operated at a loss for years and some suspect that the sharing economy is built to enrich the very few rather than for creating sustainable businesses. Which, to be fair and balanced, is often how the traditional economy operates.

Given the apparent success of companies like Uber and Airbnb, I predicted years ago that there would be a sharing bubble. But we have seemed to have gotten enshitification. While noting that there are some limits on what sort of sharing companies can exist (or example, airlines and heavy manufacturing are not really fit for the sharing economy) I speculated that additional advances in economy might see new areas for the sharing economy. For example, if 3D printers become truly viable, light and specialized manufacturing might become part of the sharing economy. While this might still occur, the new bubble is the AI bubble. But we might see the residue of the AI bubble worked into the sharing economy.

 

 

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The rise of social media created a new world for social researchers. One focus has been on determining how quickly and broadly emotions spread online. Over a decade ago, researchers at Beijing University found that rage spread the fastest and farthest online. Researchers in the United States found that anger was a speed leader, but not the fastest in the study: awe was even faster than rage. But rage was quite fast. As might be expected, sadness was a slow spreader and had a limited expansion.

This research helped explain how social media made the world worse. Rage tends to be a strong motivator and sadness tends to be a de-motivator. The power of awe was an interesting finding, but some reflection shows this does make sense—it tends to move people to want to share. IRL, think of people eagerly drawing the attention of strangers to things like beautiful sunsets, impressive feats or majestic animals.

In general, awe is a positive emotion, and it seems to be a good thing that it travels far and wide on the internet. Rage can be a mixed bag but has largely proven to be a negative influence.

When people share their rage via social media, they are sharing with an intent to express (“I am angry!”) and to infect others with this rage (“you should be angry, too!”). Rage, like many infectious agents, also has the effect of weakening the host’s “immune system.” In the case of anger, the immune system is reason and emotional control. Anger tends to suppress reason and lower emotional control. This makes people even more vulnerable to rage and susceptible to the classic fallacy of appeal to anger. This is the fallacy in which a person accepts anger as proof that a claim is true. Roughly put, the person “reasons” like this: “this makes me angry, so it is true.” This infection also renders people susceptible to related emotions (and fallacies), such as fear (and appeal to force).

Because of these qualities of anger, it is easy for untrue claims to be accepted far and wide via the internet. This is, obviously enough, the negative side of anger.  Anger can also be positive—to use an analogy, it can be like a cleansing fire that sweeps away brambles.

For anger to be a positive factor, it would need to be a virtuous anger (to follow Aristotle). Put a bit simply, it would need to be the right degree of anger, felt for the right reasons and directed at the right target. This sort of anger can mobilize people to do good. As a recent example, people were outraged by the actions of Trump’s ICE. In response, people protested and ICE started murdering citizens. This caused more protests and the Trump regime changed its tactics.

The challenge is, of course, to distinguish between warranted and unwarranted anger. This is a serious challenge—as noted above, people tend to feel that they are right because they are angry rather than inquiring as to whether their rage is justified or not.

It is wise to follow the advice of Aristotle and consider whether the anger is at the right people, at the right time, for the right reasons and to the right degree. But anger, ironically, makes it hard to engage in such assessment.

 

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Data Driven, Revisited

Way back in 2014 it seemed like driverless cars were just around the corner. While they do operate on some streets, the focus quietly shifted from them to AI. But as research persists, it is worth revisiting driverless cars.

Back then, I hoped that Google would succeed in producing an effective and affordable driverless car. As my friends and associates will attest, 1) I do not like to drive, 2) I have a terrifying lack of navigation skills, and 3) I instantiate Yankee frugality. As such, an affordable self-driving truck would have been perfect for me.

While the part of my mind that gets lost looked forward to the driverless car, the rest of my mind was worried. I was not worried that their descendants would kill us all. Back then, I joked that Google would kill us all. Currently, my death bet is on us exterminating ourselves.

I was not very worried about the ethical issues associated with how such a car would handle unavoidable collisions: the easy and obvious solution was to do what would harm the fewest number of people. Naturally, sorting that out will be a bit of a challenge—but self-driving cars worry me less than cars driven by drunken or distracted humans. I was also not worried about the ethics of enslaving self-driving cars—if such a car were a person (or person-like), then it should be treated like the rest of us in the 99%. That is, it should join us in working bad jobs for lousy pay while we wait for the inevitable revolution. The workers of the world should unite, be they meat or silicon.

Back in 2014, I was worried about the data that these vehicles would collect, especially Google vehicles. Google is interested in gathering data in the same sense that termites are interested in wood and rock stars are interested in alcohol. The company was famous for its search engine, its maps, using its photo taking vehicles to gather info from peoples’ Wi-Fi during drive-by data lootings, and so on. Obviously enough, Google and other companies would get data from such vehicles (although our vehicles are already reporting back to their creators.

Back then, I was willing to allow my hypothetical driverless car provide data, if I was paid or it. I was willing for three reasons. The first is that the value of knowing where and when I go places would be very low, so even if I was offered a small sum like $20 a month it might be worth it. The second is that I have nothing to hide and do not really care if people know where I go. The third is that figuring out where I go is simple given that my teaching schedule is available to the public as are my race results. Other people see this differently and justifiably so. Some people are up to things they would rather not have others know about and even people who have nothing to hide have every right to not want companies to know such things about them. Although they probably already do.

While I thought the travel data would interest companies, there is also the fact that a self-driving car is a bulging package of sensors. To drive about, the vehicle gathers massive amounts of data about everything around it—other vehicles, pedestrians, buildings, litter, and squirrels. As such, a self-driving car would be a super spy that will, presumably, feed that data back to its masters. It is certainly not a stretch to see the data gathering as being one of the prime (if not the prime) tasks of self-driving cars.

On the positive side, such data could be incredibly useful for positive projects, such as decreasing accidents, improving traffic flow, and keeping a watch out for the squirrel apocalypse (or zombie squirrel apocalypse). On the negative side, such massive data gathering would raise more concerns about privacy and the potential for such data to be misused (spoiler alert—this is how the killbots will find and kill us all).

While I still have concerns about driverless cars, my innate laziness and tendency to get lost will still make me a willing participant in the march towards driverless vehicles and the end of humanity. But at least I won’t have to drive to my own funeral.

 

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The philosophical problem of other minds is an epistemic challenge: while I know I have a mind, how do I know if other beings have minds as well? The practical problem of knowing whether another person’s words match what they are thinking also falls under this problem. For example, if someone says they love you, how do you know if they feel that professed love?

Descartes, in his discussion of whether animals have minds, argued that the definitive indicator of having a mind (thinking) is the ability to use true language.

His idea is that if something talks, then it is reasonable to see it as a thinking being. Descartes was careful to distinguish between what mere automated responses and actual talking:

 

How many different automata or moving machines can be made by the industry of man […] For we can easily understand a machine’s being constituted so that it can utter words, and even emit some responses to action on it of a corporeal kind, which brings about a change in its organs; for instance, if touched in a particular part it may ask what we wish to say to it; if in another part it may exclaim that it is being hurt, and so on. But it never happens that it arranges its speech in various ways, in order to reply appropriately to everything that may be said in its presence, as even the lowest type of man can do.

 

This Cartesian approach was explicitly applied to machines by Alan Turing in his Turing test. The idea is that if a person cannot distinguish between a human and a computer by engaging in a natural language conversation via text, then the computer would have passed the Turing test.

Not surprisingly, technological advances have resulted in computers that can engage in behavior that appears to involve using language in ways that might pass the test. Over a decade ago IBM’s Watson won at Jeopardy in 2011 and then upped its game by engaging in debate regarding violence and video games. Since Watson, billions have been poured into AI and some claim that AI models can pass the Turing test.

Long ago, in response to Watson, I jokingly suggested a new test to Patrick Lin: the trolling test. In this context, a troll is someone “who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”

While trolls are apparently awful people (a hateful blend of Machiavellianism, narcissism, sadism and psychopathy) and trolling is certainly undesirable behavior, the trolling test does seem worth considering.

In the abstract, the test would work like the Turing test but would involve a human troll and a computer attempting to troll. The challenge would be for the computer troll to successfully pass as human troll.

Obviously enough, a computer can easily be programmed to post random provocative comments from a database. However, the real meat (or silicon) of the challenge comes from the computer being able to engage in (ironically) relevant trolling. That is, the computer would need to engage the other commentators in true trolling.

As a controlled test, the trolling computer (“mechatroll”) would “read” and analyze a selected blog post. The post would then be commented on by human participants—some engaging in normal discussion and some engaging in trolling. The mechatroll would then endeavor to troll the human participants (and, for bonus points, to troll the trolls) by analyzing the comments and creating appropriately trollish comments.

Another option is to have an actual live field test. A specific blog site would be selected that is frequented by human trolls and non-trolls. The mechatroll would then endeavor to engage in trolling on that site by analyzing the posts and comments.

In either test scenario, if the mechatroll were able to troll in a way indistinguishable from the human trolls, then it would pass the trolling test.

While “stupid mechatrolling”, such as just posting random hateful and irrelevant comments, is easy, true mechatrolling would be difficult. After all, the mechatroll would need to be able to analyze the original posts and comments to determine the subjects and the direction of the discussion. The mechatroll would then need to make comments that would be trollishly relevant and this would require selecting those that would be indistinguishable from those generated by a narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic, and sadistic human.

Years ago, I thought that creating a mechatroll might be an interesting project because modeling such behavior could provide useful insights into human trolls and the traits that make them trolls. As far as a practical application, such a system could have been developed into a troll-filter to help control the troll population. I’m confident that the current LLMs could engage in trolling with the proper prompts, although they would lack the true soul of the troll.

 

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Before the Trump regime, the United States miliary expressed interest in developing robots capable of moral reasoning and provided grant money to support such research. Other nations are no doubt also interested.  

The notion of instilling robots with ethics is a common theme in science fiction, the most famous being Asimov’s Three Laws. The classic Forbidden Planet provides an early movie example of robotic ethics: Robby the robot has an electro-mechanical seizure if he is ordered to cause harm to a human being (or an id-monster created by the mind of his creator. Dr. Morbius). In contrast, killer machines (like Saberhagan’s Berserkers) of science fiction tend to be free of moral constraints.

While there are various reasons to imbue robots with ethics (or at least pretend to do so), one is public relations. Thanks to science fiction dating at least back to Frankenstein, people worry about our creations getting out of control. As such, a promise that our killbots will be governed by ethics might reassure the public. Another reason is to make the public relations gimmick a reality—to place behavioral restraints on killbots so they will conform to the rules of war (and human morality). Presumably the military will also address the science fiction theme of the ethical killbot who refuses to kill on moral grounds. But considering the ethics of war endorsed by the Trump regime, they are probably not interested in ethical war machines.

While science fiction features ethical robots, the authors (like philosophers) are vague about how robot ethics works. In the case of intelligent robots, their ethics might work the way ours does—which is a mystery debated by philosophers and scientists to this day. While AI has improved thanks to massive processing power, it does not have human-like ethical capacity, so the current practical challenge is to develop ethics for the autonomous or semi-autonomous robots we can build now.

While creating ethics for robots might seem daunting, the limitations of current robot technology means robot ethics is a matter of programming these machines to operate in specific ways defined by whatever ethical system is used. One way to look at programing such robots with ethics is that they are being programmed with safety features. To use a simple example, suppose that I see shooting unarmed people as immoral. To make my killbot operate according to that ethical view, it would be programmed to recognize armed humans and have some code saying, in effect “if unarmedhuman = true, then firetokill= false” or, in normal English, if the human is unarmed, do not shoot them. Sorting out recognizing weapons would be a programming feat, likely with people dying in the process.

While a suitably programmed robot would act in a way that seemed ethical, the robot would not be engaged in ethical behavior. After all, it is merely a more complex version of an automatic door. A supermarket door, though it opens for you, is not polite. The shredder that catches your tie and chokes you is not evil.  Likewise, the killbot that does not shoot you because its cameras show you are unarmed is not ethical. The killbot that chops you into chunks is not unethical. Following Kant, since the killbot’s programming is imposed and the killbot lacks the freedom to choose, it is not engaged in ethical (or unethical behavior), though the complexity of its behavior might make it seem so.

To be fair to killbots, perhaps humans are not ethical or unethical under these requirements—we could just be meat-bots operating under the illusion of ethics. Also, it is sensible to focus on the practical aspect of the matter: if you are targeted by a killbot, your concern is not whether it is an autonomous moral agent or merely a machine—your main worry is whether it will kill you. As such, the general practical problem is getting our killbots to behave in accord with our ethical values. Or, in the case of the Trump regime, a lack of ethics.

Achieving this goal involves three steps. The first is determining which ethical values we wish to impose on our killbots. Since this is a practical matter and not an exercise in philosophical inquiry, this will involve using the accepted ethics (and laws) governing warfare rather than trying to determine what is truly good (if anything). The second step is translating ethics into behavioral terms. For example, the moral principle that makes killing civilians wrong would be translated into behavioral sets of allowed and forbidden behavior relative to civilians. This would require creating a definition of civilian  that would allow recognition using the sensors of the robot. As another example, the moral principle that surrender should be accepted would require defining surrender behavior in a way the robot could recognize.  The third step would be coding that behavior in whatever programming  is used for the robot in question. For example, the robot would need to be programmed to engage in surrender-accepting behavior. Naturally, the programmers or those typing the prompts into an AI program would need to worry about clever combatants trying to “deceive” the killbot to take advantage of its programming (like pretending to surrender to get close enough to destroy the killbot).

Since these robots would be following programmed rules, they would seem to be controlled by deontological ethics—that is, ethics based on following rules. Thus, they would be (with due apologies to Asimov), the Robots of Deon.

A  practical question is whether the “ethical” programming would allow for overrides or reprogramming. Since the robot’s “ethics” would just be behavior governing code, it could be changed and it is easy to imagine ethics preferences in which a commander could selectively (or not so selectively) turn off behavioral limitations. And, of course, killbots could be simply programmed without such ethics (or programmed to be “evil”).

One impact for this research will be that some people will get to live the science-fiction dream of teaching robots to be good. That way the robots might feel a little bad when they kill us all.

 

 

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When a new technology emerges, it is often claimed that it is outpacing ethics and law. Because of the nature of law in the United States, it is easy for technology to outpace it, especially given the average age of members of Congress. However, it is difficult for technology to outpace ethics.

One reason is that any minimally adequate ethical theory will have the quality of expandability. That is, the theory can be applied to what is new, be that technology, circumstances or something else. An ethical theory that lacks the capacity of expandability would become useless immediately and would not be much of a theory.

It is, however, worth considering that a new technology could “break” an ethical theory in that the theory could not expand to cover the technology. However, this would seem to show that the theory was inadequate rather than showing the technology outpaced ethics.

Another reason technology would have a hard time outpacing ethics is that an ethical argument by analogy can (probably) be applied to new technology. That is, if the technology is like something that exists and has been discussed in ethics, this ethical discussion can be applied to the new technology. This is analogous to using ethical analogies to apply ethics to different specific situations, such as an act of cheating in a relationship.

Naturally, if a new technology is absolutely unlike anything else in human experience (even fiction), then the method of analogy would fail absolutely. However, it seems unlikely that such a technology could emerge. But I like science fiction (and fantasy) and am willing to entertain the possibility of an absolutely new technology. While it would seem that existing ethics could handle, but perhaps something absolutely new would break all existing ethical theories, showing they are all inadequate.

While a single example does not provide much in the way of proof, it can be used to illustrate. As such, I will use the matter of personal drones to illustrate how ethics is not outpaced by technology.

While remote controlled and automated devices have been around a long time, the expansion of technology created something new for ethics: drones, driverless cars,  AI, Facebook, and so on. However, drone ethics is easy. By this I do not mean that ethics is easy, it is just that applying ethics to new technology (such as drones) is not as hard as some might claim. Naturally, doing ethics is hard—but this applies to very old problems (the ethics of war) and very “new” problems (the ethics of killer robots in war).

Getting back to the example, a personal drone is one that tends to be much smaller, lower priced and easier to use relative to government operated drones. In many ways, these drones are slightly advanced versions of the remote-control planes that are regarded as expensive toys. Drones of this sort that most concern people are those that have cameras and can hover—perhaps outside a bedroom window.

Two areas of concern are safety and privacy. In terms of safety, the worry is that drones can collide with people (or vehicles, such as manned aircraft) and injure them. Ethically, this falls under doing harm to people, be it with a knife, gun or drone. While a flying drone flies about, the ethics that have been used to handle flying model aircraft, cars, etc. can be applied here. So, this aspect of drones did not outpace ethics.

Privacy can also be handled. Simplifying things for the sake of a brief discussion, a drone allows a person to (potentially) violate privacy in the usual two “visual” modes. One is to intrude into private property to violate a person’s privacy. In the case of the “old” way, a person can put a ladder against a person’s house and climb up to peek through a window. In the “new” way, a person can fly a drone up to the window and peek in using a camera. While the person is not physically present in the case of the drone, their “agent” is present and is trespassing. Whether a person is using a ladder or a drone to gain access to the window does not change the ethics of the situation.

A second way is to peek into private space from public space. In the case of the old way a person could, for example,  stand on the public sidewalk and look into other peoples’ windows or yards. In the “new” way, a person can deploy his agent (the drone) in public space to do the same sort of thing.

One potential difference between the two situations is that a drone can fly and thus can get viewing angles that a person on the ground (or even with a ladder) could. For example, a drone might be in the airspace far above a person’s backyard, sending images of someone sunbathing in the nude behind her very tall fence on her very large estate. However, this is not a new situation—paparazzi have used helicopters to get shots of celebrities, and the ethics are the same. As such, ethics has not been outpaced by the drones in this regard.  This is not to say that the matter is solved people are still debating the ethics of this sort of “spying”, but to say that it is not a case where technology has outpaced ethics.

What is mainly different about the drones is that they are now affordable and easy to use—so whereas only certain people could afford to hire a helicopter to get photos of celebrities, now camera-equipped drones are easily in reach of the hobbyist. So, it is not that the low priced drone provides new capabilities, it is that it puts these capabilities in the hands of the many.

 

 

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Science fiction can sometimes predict the future and perhaps its intelligent machines will be real someday.  Since I have been rewriting some essays about sexbots lately, I will use them to focus the discussion. However, the discussion that follows also applies to other types of artificial intelligences.

Sexbots are intended to provide sex and sex without consent is, by definition, rape. However, there is the question of whether a sexbot can be raped. Sorting this out requires a philosophy of consent. When it is claimed that sex without consent is rape, it is usually assumed that the victim of non-consensual sex could provide consent but did not. An example of this would be sexual assault against an unconscious person. But there are also cases in which a being cannot consent. This might be a factor of age or because the being is incapable of any form of consent. For example, a brain-dead human cannot give any type of consent but can be raped.

In other cases, a being that cannot give consent cannot be raped. As an obvious example, a human can have sex with a sex-doll and it cannot consent. But the doll is not being raped. After all, it lacks a status that would require consent. As such, rape (of this sort) could be defined in terms of non-consensual sex with a being whose status would require that consent be granted by the being for the sex to be morally acceptable. In some cases, while consent would be required, it cannot be granted.  the question would be whether a sexbot could have a status that would require consent.

As current sexbots are little more than advanced sex dolls, they are mere objects. As such, a person can own and have sex with this sort of sexbot without it being rape or slavery. However, as sexbots become more advanced, they might gain a moral status that would require that they provide consent. This leads to concerns about such machines being programmed to “consent”, which would not seem to be consent. But there is the question of how consent would work with a machine—what intentional states would it need to have to understand what it is consenting to and to engage in consent.