Comments on: A call for machine morality

Wendell Wallach, lecturer at Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, hypothesizes about what we face in an age of AI machines such as self-driving cars or household robots.

[Had_to_be_said]

Sorry, but hes not a "Skeptic"... He is a Cynic...

Furthermore, the assertions regarding "morality", simply ignores a fundamental philosophical-reality...

Namely...

Either, "morality" is handed-down from some, theoretically, unimpeachable-source (I.E. God, dead-ancestors, super-intelligent space-aliens, etc.)... Or, "morality" is nothing more than a, more or less, random-collection of social-conventions (derived from such sources as, random bits of instinctive-behaviors, and complex, fundamentally-random, long-term social-interactions).

And frankly, based upon the obvious-failures of "morality" throughout history, and enormous differences evidenced by even a cursory-examination of cultural-anthropology... it is quite clear that, so-called, "morality" is both, highly-subjective and (within any actual human-society) provides little, real, long-term benefit to such a society (in anything other than, as an arbitrary-set of often illogical and frequently-ignored, allegedly commonly-accepted, social-edicts).

"Ethics", on the other hand... is a "philosophy" of, hypothetically, reasoned restraints. They are designed to affect some, overall, socially-beneficial end. Primarily, the philosophical under-pinning of "ethics" is that no arbitrary element, or elements, of a society can cause harm to the other elements of a society, solely for their own, exclusive, benefit. This is based upon an empirical, and social, belief that such behavior, inevitably, causes long-term injury to a society as a whole.

In short, "Morality" is a set of, imposed, effectively, generally-arbitrary social-morays. In other words... derived without the need for "rational" processes (it is either "handed-down", or it is randomly-evolved), whereas "Ethics", is a "philosophy" of protecting society from tangible damage, through empirical and "rational" methods. And it is, therefore, based upon "logic" (exactly like modern "AI").

I do not know if this article was simply too full of generalizations to coherently present the true, philosophical-nature, of the original "lecture". However, "Wendell Wallachs" inaccurate assertion that he is a "skeptic" (a philosophy which is founded on reasoned-frameworks, and the requirement for empirical-evidence)... as opposed to a "cynic" (a philosophy based upon a set of general-suppositions regarding the inherently-flawed nature of the universe, and man)... tends to lead me to disregard his assertions, and musings, as fundamentally intellectually-irrelevant. This is especially true in light of his apparent biases, and the unforgivably speculative-nature of his suppositions, and predictions. In my opinion, this can only be due to an obvious lack of understanding of the, actual technical-aspects, within the field of "AI", itself.

[Zonsb]

I agree...

Three principles of a freedom for civilization:

1. No person, group or government shall initiate force, threat of force or fraud against any person, property or contract.

2. It is ethical and moral to use force against any person that violates principle 1.

3. There shill be no exceptions to principle 1 and or 2.

Freedom is a societal condition where 100% of the people have 100% control over 100% of their property 100% of the time. And have zero-percent control over anybody else?s property. Andrew J. Galambos (paraphrase)

[spothannah]

"Sorry"

I like what you've said here. I also couldn't tell if the story had accurately reported what the lecturer said or whether the linguistic ambiguities were attributable to the reporter. It does form an interesting moire pattern though.

[t8]

Microsoft robots will be evil

Taken from my blog @
http://www.weblogs.co.nz/?p=121

MS assembled robots however would most likely not have ethical programming built into them as Microsoft doesn?t have the skills for anything ethical. Their robots would most likely engage in trying to annihilate their opposition and steal other people?s stuff when given the opportunity. In addition to that, they would be prone to crashing into things, and would pickup all kinds of nasty viruses while engaging in immoral acts. MS robots would only be able to interact with other Microsoft inventions too, including the information super highway, as opposed to the Internet, so they would be very limited.

I think that an open source robot would be much nicer and would be able to interact better with the world.

This is why I think robots in the future should run on open source. Open source is reliable, ethical, cost effective, and open.

[spothannah]

Evil

I guess we should focus, a little bit at least, on the morality of the humans before we worry too much about the morality of the robots that humans creste, huh?