The head of DeepMind says the rise of artificial intelligence could be as important as the industrial revolution – and it must put ethics at its heart.
Progress always seems to ride a slippery slope. Innovations generally bring a plethora of potential benefits and just as many dangers, the obvious and the hidden. Technologies that tamper with our biological constructs is well underway in the neuro- and biotech industries. Historically, innovations in medicine have usually been beneficial on the aggregate.
But these new breakthroughs go beyond preventing and healing pre-existing causes. Transhuman technologies hold the promise of enhancing who we are as individuals and potentially as an entire species, and the decisions surrounding these technologies are far from simple. Dr. Nayef Al-Rodhan, a philosopher, neuroscientist, and director of the Geneva Center for Security Policy, believes we should be acting now to prepare for the inevitable and the unpredictable ramifications.
Considering our mixed track record as a species in rolling out groundbreaking innovations, discussing and finding potential solutions to many of the hidden dangers, and obvious ones, seems more than reasonable. One of the more puzzling questions is, where do we begin to have a pragmatic conversation on the ethics of these technologies?
There are plenty of theories about what drive human decisions, not least because human morality is infinitely complex and our minds crave frames through which to make sense of chaos. Dr. Al-Rodhan has his own conception of what drives human motivations. He makes meaning using the lens of “5 P’s” – Power, Pride, Profit, Pleasure, and Permanence – which he posits drive human motivations. “This is my view, the foundation of my outlook…this perceived emotion of self interest drives our moral compass.”
Continue reading “The Imminence of Transhuman Technologies” »
“This Report to the Club of Rome attempts to assess the condition of the tropical rainforests over the past 40 years and to project their likely future over the next 40 years, in terms of forest cover change, drivers of deforestation, impacts on biodiversity, and the consequences of climate change.”
““Who is Sabita?” I was looking right at Sabita Devi when she said these words. She was describing her life as a wife and mother in Jharkhand, one of the poorest states in India, where she has spent most of her days inside the four walls of her home. “No one in my village knew my name,” Sabita told me. Her contact with the outside world was mediated entirely by her husband: who she could talk to, what she could buy, when (and if) she could see a doctor. She was isolated from everyone and everything but her children.”
Quoted: “Traditional law is a form of agreement. It is an agreement among people and their leaders as to how people should behave. There are also legal contracts between individuals. These contracts are a form of private law that applies to the participants. Both types of agreement are enforced by a government’s legal system.”
“Ethereum is both a digital currency and a programming language. But it is the combination of these ingredients that make it special. Since most agreements involve the exchange of economic value, or have economic consequences, we can implement whole categories of public and private law using Ethereum. An agreement involving transfer of value can be precisely defined and automatically enforced with the same script.”
“When viewed from the future, today’s current legal system seems downright primitive. We have law libraries — buildings filled with words that nobody reads and whose meaning is unclear, even to courts who enforce them arbitrarily. Our private contracts amount to vague personal promises and a mere hope they might be honored.
For the first time, Ethereum offers an alternative. A new kind of law.”
Read the article here > http://etherscripter.com/what_is_ethereum.html
“Advocates argue that the rule-based approach has one major virtue: it is always clear why the machine makes the choice that it does, because its designers set the rules. That is a crucial concern for the US military, for which autonomous systems are a key strategic goal. Whether machines assist soldiers or carry out potentially lethal missions, ‘the last thing you want is to send an autonomous robot on a military mission and have it work out what ethical rules it should follow in the middle of things’.”
Remember Pacific Rim? Giant battle droids kicking the hell out of monsters? Well, that’s (almost) becoming a reality: Giant bots built in Japan and America are set to go head-to-head in combat.
A slew of articles are claiming that an “exasperated” artificial intelligence snapped at its programmer during a conversation about morality and ethics. Sadly, it’s another example of the media overselling the capabilities of simple chatbots.
“The evidence is incontrovertible that recent extinction rates are unprecedented in human history and highly unusual in Earth’s history. Our analysis emphasizes that our global society has started to destroy species of other organisms at an accelerating rate, initiating a mass extinction episode unparalleled for 65 million years. If the currently elevated extinction pace is allowed to continue, humans will soon (in as little as three human lifetimes) be deprived of many biodiversity benefits.”
“The ethics of encountering non-sentient alien life in our solar systems boils down to a core dilemma, says Waller. ‘Is it about conservation and preservation? Or is it about our needs, wants, and desires?’ On Earth, natural-resource grabs have a history of bringing out the worst in us as a species…There’s plenty of reason to believe other planets will be chock-full of resources we’d like to exploit, even if the life forms are microbial – perhaps especially if they’re microbial.” Read more
