{"id":1451,"date":"2017-04-11T03:51:46","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T07:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=1451"},"modified":"2017-04-11T03:51:46","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T07:51:46","slug":"programming-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/04\/11\/programming-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Programming Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most fascinating part of the readings were, to me, the ones about “programming morality.” As we move closer and closer to a world filled with automation and artificial intelligences, it becomes clearer and clearer just how much gray area there is involved in creating those very things. The human decision-making process is already a fairly complicated one, recreating that process is even more so. As the New York Times article puts it, “These situations can be difficult enough for human minds to wrestle with; when ethicists think through how robots can deal with them, they sometimes get stuck, as we do, between unsatisfactory options.” We humans can have the benefit of acting first, then explaining later, secure in the knowledge that whatever action we take, we will have the benefit of explaining it later. Robots and other AI’s, however, do not have that luxury. Every decision must be programmed beforehand, every little choice mapped out.<\/p>\n

My question is this: in this situation, where does the buck stop, so to speak? Who is responsible for the actions of programmed AI’s? Say a driverless car drives off the road to avoid hitting a group of children crossing the road, but injures or even kills the driver in the process. We might agree that was the “morally correct” choice, but does that help the driver’s family? If they decide to sue, are the programmers responsible? Dealing with these ethical conundrums is already hard enough without adding in the bonus ingredient of legality.<\/p>\n

infinitywave.deviantart.com\/art\/Robot-Law-School-tee-366360059<\/a>, accessed 4\/11\/17<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, famously came up with the “Three Laws of Robotics,” which are still used in robotics today. They are: 1) A robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction cause a human being to be harmed, 2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law., and 3)\u00a0A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Now, as far as laws go those aren’t bad, they’re rather tidy and all-encompassing actually. What makes me feel weird about all of this is that these issues shouldn’t\u00a0<\/em>be so easy. They’re hard, they’re\u00a0supposed<\/em> to be hard, and I worry that in our haste to welcome the future with open arms we’ve lost sight of that. It has taken centuries of philosophy and thought to create the morality system we have today, and now we’re trying to streamline all of that as we hurry to reach the future we so desperately want. These questions take time, they take effort, they take thought. I hope that we don’t fixate on the destination and miss out on the path we need to get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most fascinating part of the readings were, to me, the ones about “programming morality.” As we move closer and closer to a world filled with automation and artificial intelligences, it becomes clearer and clearer just how much gray area there is involved in creating those very things. The human decision-making process is already a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Programming Morality”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1453,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions\/1453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}