The momentous advance in artificial intelligence demands a new set of ethics
As our relationship with technological creations develops, a new set of ethics is required.
Deep learning represents a paradigm shift in the relationship humans have with their technological creations. It results in AI that displays genuinely surprising and unpredictable behaviour. Commenting after his first loss, Lee described being stunned by an unconventional move he claimed no human would ever have made. Demis Hassabis, one of DeepMind’s founders, echoed the sentiment: “We’re very pleased that AlphaGo played some quite surprising and beautiful moves.” ...
When it comes to deep learning, unpredictability and surprises are – or can be – a good thing. They can serve as indicators that a system is working well, perhaps better than the humans that came before it. Such is the case with AlphaGo. In the coming years, it will probably continue to learn and to improve, surprising and teaching its human competitors with new moves and strategies along the way.
Other artificial intelligence, designed to benefit humanity by surpassing our abilities in highly complex tasks – diagnosing illness, researching pharmaceuticals, managing power grids, protecting against cyber threats – could rely for its success on deep learning and the unpredictability that seems to be a necessary part of it.
However, unpredictability indicates a loss of human control. That Hassabis is genuinely surprised at his creation’s behaviour betrays a lack of control inherent in the design. And though some loss of control might be fine in the context of a game such as Go, it raises pressing ethics and governance questions elsewhere.
How much (and what kind of) control should we relinquish to driverless cars, artificial diagnosticians, or cyber guardians? How should we design appropriate human control into sophisticated AI that requires us to give up some of that very control? Is there some AI that we should just not develop if it means any loss of human control?
How much of a say should corporations, governments, experts or citizens have in these matters? These important questions, and many others like them, have emerged in response, but remain unanswered. They require human, not human-like, solutions.
Answers to these questions will also require input from the right mix of humans and AI researchers alone can only hope to contribute partial solutions. As we’ve learned throughout history, scientific and technical solutions don’t necessarily translate into moral victories.
Organisations such as the Open Roboethics initiative and the Foundation for Responsible Robotics were founded on this understanding. They bring together some of the world’s leading ethicists, social scientists, policymakers and technologists to work towards meaningful and informed answers to uniquely human questions surrounding robotics and AI. The process of drafting ethics standards for robotics and AI will involve an interdisciplinary effort.
Because of deep learning, AI is surprising us with the speed of its own advancement. Expertise is no longer a 10,000-hour proposition when the would-be expert’s “brain” expands with every improvement to Amazon’s and Google’s clouds. This new pace of innovation is precisely what lends urgency to our challenge.
