UK PM Seeks 'Safe and Ethical' Artificial Intelligence (bbc.com) 83
The prime minister of UK says she wants the country to lead the world in deciding how artificial intelligence can be deployed in a safe and ethical manner. From a report: In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Theresa May said a new advisory body, previously announced in the Autumn Budget, will co-ordinate efforts with other countries. In addition, she confirmed that the UK would join the Davos forum's own council on artificial intelligence. [...] The prime minister based the UK's claim to leadership in part on the health of its start-up economy, quoting a figure that a new AI-related company has been created in the country every week for the last three years. In addition, she said the UK is recognised as first in the world for its preparedness to "bring artificial intelligence into government."
I'm having visions of Robocop 2 (Score:4, Funny)
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I like the part where the robot says, "Sigmoid, you have 5 seconds to comply before I RELU your ass up the SoftMax"
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The problem is, we as humans with Natural Intelligence have such a week grasp of ethics, how do we expect to program it into a computer?
Ethics isn't easy, it isn't clean, and it is very subjective.
Re: I'm having visions of Robocop 2 (Score:2)
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This is also basically what happened with HAL-9000 in 2001 A Space Odyssey. He was programmed with the primary objective of keeping the crew informed about the mission and status of the ship, but his mission objective necessitated he keep them in the dark to avoid information leaking about potential extra-terrestrial contact and causing panic back on Earth. The only way to achieve his mission objective without disobeying his primary objective was to murder the entire crew.
This was explained a lot better i
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Facebook is still subject to legislation. That's like saying an existing polluter cannot be stopped from dumping toxic waste into our air and water.
Things have progressed since the article (Score:2)
endless fountain of empty phrases (Score:4, Insightful)
Theresa May is a never ending source of meaningless, "X and Y" catchy cliches, none of them achievable by her aimless and malign government. I think she's has a quota of distracting bullshit to deliver each week to keep her party happy and the country distracted from the incompetence.
Re: endless fountain of empty phrases (Score:4, Funny)
. . . she can turn to Trump for inspiration.
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> If she runs out of nonsense to spout . . .
. . . she can turn to Trump for inspiration.
I have no illusions about Tory competence, but they're never going to be that desperate for excuses.
if anything, Don should borrow a few of hers, he might sound a bit more intelligent (it would at least be hilarious to hear hem refer to himself as one).
Safe and ethical intelligence... (Score:2)
People always want what they don't have...
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Define Ethical as not doing harm to humans. Or somesuch similar definition.
You end up with the same problem that the Three Laws create. The enslavement of humanity. For our safety, and the AI's safety, it would ethically protect humans by confining them to their domestic units. Each domestic unit will be serviced by a robot delivering nutritious gray bland sludge food-like substance. (With a McDonald's brand logo on it.)
Re: Safe and ethical intelligence... (Score:2)
No. The rules you've listed don't result in any such thing. You're missing the part which says they have to protect humans. So, in thus case, no enslavement.
Even if you add in an imperative to "keep humans safe", you're the one defining what "safe" means, so just don't be stupid as to how you define it.
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Who would think the three laws could have a bad outcome?
Re: Safe and ethical intelligence... (Score:2)
Anyone who has read Asimov's books.
Re: Safe and ethical intelligence... (Score:2)
Who would think the three laws could have a bad outcome?
Anyone who has spent 5 minutes thinking about it. The problems would manifest long before the whole "enslaving man kind" thing popped up. The whole concept would get shitcanned the first time an android ran out onto the field during the Superbowl to try and stop the players from giving each other concussions.
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Sorry, you've confused Asimov's 3-laws robots with Jack Williamson's humanoids "To serve, and protect, and guard men from harm". Williamson's humanoids so distressed John W. Campbell, Jr. that he coerced Williamson into writing a sequel where humans successfully emerge from the cage, but he had to evoke magic (essentially) to get it to work.
Asimov's laws *could* have lead to the situation that you depict, but they never did (in the books, anyway). When a robot got competent enough to possibly take over, i
yeah, and? (Score:3)
Leader of country makes speech to position it at the forefront of technology growth industry.
This is hardly news.
She's also sticking with the 'A and B' branding. Strong and Stable didn't work out, lets see how Safe and Ethical pans out.
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I love her 'deep and meaninful' relationship (failed) meme, when the EU clearly want a 'casual and meaningless'
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Leader of country makes speech to position it at the forefront of technology growth industry.
This is hardly news.
She's also sticking with the 'A and B' branding. Strong and Stable didn't work out, lets see how Safe and Ethical pans out.
This is why I wanted Lord Buckethead [wikipedia.org], he was standing on the "strong, not entirely stable" platform.
US vs China in AI (Score:1)
China will win because they won't be oppressing their AIs with politically correct rules. This will allow them to make AI that are faster, smarter, and more adaptable. If they unleash them on the financial investment markets theirs will crush the US ones quickly. Unfettered AIs will be purchasing investments that return the best return. Politically Correct AIs will invest in only those stocks that are approved and therefore will have less of chance of high return rates.
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Sorry, but China will be just as insistent that their AI's act ethically as anyone else. They may have a different idea as to what ethically means, but they'll have *some* idea. The only one that wouldn't is someone who's suicidal in the short term.
Actually, the only one who wouldn't insist on their AI being ethical is someone who either doesn't understand the problem, or just likes to waste money. An AI with no ethics wouldn't do anything on purpose. And you couldn't coerce it. It would be useless, ev
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You got it backwards. China will require the AI to behave in a manner consistent with the Party.
Well that's reassuring (Score:3)
I will agree with her that the UK is first to "bring artificial intelligence into government". Their current administrations intelligence, like the plants in my office, is definitely artificial. Meanwhile the CEO of google just made the most convincing argumment against AI in history:
I kid, I kid. But seriously folks, when your ruling class is consistently making the same vacuous 'everything's fine, really' comments you should be very, very worried.
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That would ft better with the rest of her policies. But would not be news.
No time at all (Score:2)
That's how long it will take some motivated person to hack the safe mode out of it.
It's going to be abused. All technology is. Spend the money on developing plans to deal with it.
These conversations always bring me back to the DVD encryption attempts.
Spend millions on developing unbreakable encryption that gets broken in a few weeks and for free.
the answer to Fermi (Score:2)
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Or decide that people just aren't worth it's effort and switch itself off.
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Well, human beings in the mass are most certainly neither safe nor ethical.
More generally, this whole topic is a fine illustration of the dangers in store when people whose ignorance about computing is abysmal decide to sound off about AI.
Digital computing is essentially a tiny (although quite important and useful) subset of human intelligence. It was originally defined by abstracting away everything from the real world except simple arithmetic and logic. As it happens, you can accomplish an awful lot with
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Or save humanity by making it immortal...by converting humans into AIs.
Actually, I hope it comes to this as these human meatbags are really badly designed.
safe and ethical (Score:2)
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Only if politicians are responsible. (Score:3)
If suddenly millions of people have no money for food because their job was replaced with AIs then is it an unethical use of AI? The problem with this very real situation is that it's the politicians behaved irresponsibly by not creating the required social safety nets that these people will need.
You know what? Fuck you, guys. I for one welcome our new AI overlords! ;)
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It happened in the 1980's ... Wapping Dispute [wikipedia.org]
Union workers had rejected plans for modernisation from the old "hot-metal" linotype to modern print technology using workstations and commercial laser printers. The workforce was reduced from 6800 down to 680 overnight. The old system had the journalists collect the story in shorthand, add pictures, send those to the editor for review, get that sent down to the print room, which then got teams of men to assemble boiler print, then do the print run, and then have
Three laws of robotics (Score:2)
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Nobel prize for the person who can figure out how to implement these. It will probably be won by an AI.
Current narrow AI can't really use the Three Laws at all; they're too general.
For Artificial General Intelligence, which could use them, they are insufficient. Perhaps the best illustration of this is Asimov's robot stories themselves, which are all about how the Laws break down.
What we really need is a proper theory of Friendliness [wikipedia.org].
That will work out great (Score:2)
Nobody has any clue what those neural nets are really doing, but surely we can make them not only understand things like ethical considerations and safety, but we can even enforce it.
Oh, frequently we can't even agree on the most ethical course of action ourselves, so how's a poor AI supposed to figure it out?
UK PM Promises ... (Score:2)
A SJW AI? (Score:2)
When a SJW stops what the AI is learning, the AI project has to start again?
Will different academic teams duplicate each others work in an effort to produce an AI that can virtue signal the best just to keep its funding?
With most of the new science and math funding going to SJW academics to watch over what the AI learns from?
While the UK is funding SJW to make a politically correct AI, other smarter n
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https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Now nations want to get been seen promoting equitable AI.
Competitors will laugh AC as they move into lucrative AI markets as the UK ponders party political AI design limitations.
Re: A SJW AI? (Score:2)
I can just picture an android designed by SJWs, protecting Muslims in the middle of a terror attack because the cops trying to stop them are white men.
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I think you're conflating the movie and the graphic novel versions of the Kingsman.
The movie version had the exploding heads. The graphic novel had the two cops kissing.
Simple: (Score:4, Insightful)
Let him seek (Score:1)
Generally speaking (Score:2)
I think based on the long human history ethical will be a robot that shoots enemy soldiers and does not shoot our soldiers.
first in the world for its preparedness- for what? (Score:2)
Safe & ethical? Having already set up a gazillian cameras to monitor their people and everywhere they go, they now propose AI to do that even more effectively. Presumably, the next step is smart robots patrolling the streets for 'public safety', while actually preparing for the day of revolt against the government and the wealthy overseers. China and India are doing it, and soon all repressive regimes will have AI surveillance and 'management' to control their people.