IBM and Microsoft Sign Vatican Pledge For Ethical AI (ft.com) 93
IBM and Microsoft have signed an "ethical resolution" with the Vatican to develop AI in a way that will protect the planet and the rights of all people [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: The pledge, called the "Rome Call for AI Ethics," will be presented on Friday morning to Pope Francis by Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, and John Kelly, IBM's executive vice-president, as well as Vatican officials and Qu Dongyu, the Chinese director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The two US tech companies lead the world in AI development, measured by the number of patents they have amassed. The document calls for AI to safeguard the rights of all humankind, particularly the weak and underprivileged, and for new regulations in fields such as facial recognition. It said that there must be a "duty of explanation" that would show not only how AI algorithms come to their decisions but also what their purpose and objectives are.
Ah yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even the thought of complying with church sponsored morality makes me want to engineer some aerial HKs.
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"the Vatican is of course synonymous with ethics.
as are Micro$oft and $IBM...monopolists, "
Well, they don't run a worldwide conspiracy of child rapists though.
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how naive do people have to be, to not see how completely self-serving, irresponsible, evil and corrupt most corporations really are?
Some of us are not naive about that at all. But what the actual fuck do you expect us to do about it, when we're just trying to survive from month to month? Join a militia? Start World War III over it? Become domestic terrorists, bomb the offices of these greedy-ass corporations? Oh sure sure sure the innocents that become collateral damage, workers who like us are just trying to survive and have nothing to do with policy decisions, forget about them, right? Nope. Change like this has to come from higher up
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You don't need to give up modern life to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. You literally took the hardest path. What you should have done is done business with ethical companies, voting your opinion of them with your dollars. That, and working within the system to fix the system. Too many of you don't seem to understand that YOU are the government of the United States,
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"the Vatican is of course synonymous with ethics."
They have a direct line to the old man in the sky and they didn't even need Elon Musk to get them one.
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Oh, you mean Chuck? Chuck is a dick, and he hasn't given a shit what happens down here in a long, long time now.
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Frosty piss on the Pope's head? (Score:2)
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To say nothing of protecting their kiddie touchers from justice. The Catholic Church may or may not touch more kids per member than schools or competitive sports or the movie industry, but they do hide them from prosecution more intently.
Oh, the POPE (Score:2)
Keep your AI close, and your children closer.
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I'd be more impressed if they pledged to employ ethical executives.
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"Great ideas enter into reality with evil associates and with disgusting alliances. But the greatness remains, nerving the race in its slow ascent."
--Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
Denominational model (Score:3)
The "priesthood of all believers" (Protestant) is egalitarian and merit-of-argument based. Rather like open source.
The "magisterium" (Catholic) is top-down and dogmatic.
I know which I'd prefer having a (quite theoretical, at this point) AI.
Generally I avoid inter-theist argument here, but with something as crucial as AI (and pseudo-AI), I need to make this distinction clear.
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Protestant are not as egalitarian and "merit-of-argument" as you make them out to be.
Protestants and all Christian Denominations that follow the Sunday Worship schedule are all daughters of the Catholic Church. Christianity is a Judaic Religion and the Day of Worship in Judaism is Saturday. Had they any serious merit-of-argument they would have altered their day of Worship back to Saturday, as just one example. There are many more but lets not tire out everyone's eyes.
The Protestant and Catholic split is
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New Covenant, new day. Still, I suggest contemplation on Saturday, as well. Even better, every day.
As for "heathens", they're dead. Is there something specific you'd advocate as a preferable outcome?
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the heathens are not dead... they still live, I am a descendant of those heathens as well.
I am not advocating for any specific outcomes, just pointing out that some hypocrisy is going on as they fled their oppressors to become oppressors themselves.
Agree on contemplation every day, but there is a commandment to remember the Sabbath. I cannot think of a valid reason to countermand such things as the Catholics and Protestants have, just another example of them usurping the authority of God. I wonder how man
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Ah, so you are taking the very scientific position that people who aren't you, are you. Or did you mean those "heathens" are "not dead" in some other sense?
I remember the Sabbath every Sabbath. What that means, was definitively scoped by Christ, by rescuing an animal on the Sabbath, despite legalistic objections.
But, let's have you use words honestly and without double meaning for once. What do -you yourself- advocate be done on the Sabbath? Not argument for it as a means of arguing against it, and agai
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"Ah, so you are taking the very scientific position that people who aren't you, are you. Or did you mean those "heathens" are "not dead" in some other sense?"
I am Native American by Blood but more pale man than my Tribal Heritage, I used the term "heathens" as they used it back in the day to describe most non-believers but usually more specifically the natives of the lands that the Protestants came to in their egress from Europe.
"I remember the Sabbath every Sabbath. What that means, was definitively scoped
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Thanks for presenting all this Christian advocacy!
Later.
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Titus 3:9
But avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless.
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You are bold, indeed. To make the claim that discussion of a Commandment is foolish, unprofitable, or useless.
That passage is far and wide out of context. That passage was about the laws of man not the commandments of God as Titus 3:1 puts it. "Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates,..."
You stuck your foot in your mouth in a bad way. I hope you do not do that again.
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How is this advocacy?
I am just pointing out hypocrisy, are you not able to understand the difference?
The fruits of you labor defines who you are.
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Relative to typical Slashdot atheism, this is indeed extensive Christian advocacy. There is no hypocrisy, there are variant positions that have extensive history of argument behind them. You aren't the first person in history to argue the appropriate "day of the week".
Your confusion seems to be that I care if another position on that is ultimately correct and I'm wrong. You care about being wrong. I care about God. If I am ultimately incorrect, I'll inevitably hear it from the only person that matters
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Is there something wrong with you?
"You care about being wrong. I care about God."
These are the same thing. If I care about being wrong that means I care about God. And if you care about God, you should also care about being wrong. You cannot hold the position of not caring about being wrong but also caring about God. This is called a cognitive dissonance.
I feel sorry for you, we are supposed to figure this out BEFORE you go before Christ for judgement not during judgement.
And you are right.. my opinion
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"Relative to typical Slashdot atheism, this is indeed extensive Christian advocacy."
I forgot to ask... are you an atheist or a Christian? What Christian evokes atheism or typicalities associated with such in a discussion like this? Or is it that you are allowed to discuss these things and I am not? The "Catholic Church" is referenced in this Article... are you so dim as to not expect at least some mention of religion in these posts?
You kept responding to me yet expect me to not respond back?
I suspect tha
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No, caring about God means not wasting time on side theological issues. They not important, or profitable to debate, as the Apostle Paul correctly pointed out.
There is no core theological or moral consequence to a distinction between honoring God on a Saturday, on a Sunday, or equivalently every day of the week.
As for the rest, are you simply trolling me? A moment ago you identified as a "heathen", now you are presenting as a pious Christian overwhelmingly fixated on the most nuanced of theological argume
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Yes, you are indeed trolling. You have taken Titus 3:9 out of context in a very terrible way. You have called Gods commandments "They not important, or profitable to debate, as the Apostle Paul correctly pointed out." and besmirched Apostle Paul's name in the action.
"As for the rest, are you simply trolling me? A moment ago you identified as a "heathen", now you are presenting as a pious Christian overwhelmingly fixated on the most nuanced of theological arguments."
How did you miss that boat? You do unde
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Okay, heathen.
I'll point you to the mainline refutation of your disingenuous presentation. [wikipedia.org]
That's more than you deserve.
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SirAstral: "How is this advocacy?"
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You just do not get it.
You have stated that a Commandment God took the time to make and tell us is foolish, unprofitable, or vain to discuss.
You need to reconcile that first... not toss up an article about the Sabbath. You might not be ready for this... but the Bible is the authority. I read that... not Wikipedia. And I like Wikipedia, but that site is not useful in this discussion. Only the Bible and the other ancient scriptures that surround it. Now if you can find a scripture where God has moved the
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No, you are saying -your interpretation- of the Bible is the authority. That is, -you- are the authority.
Find within the link an extensive list of individuals and historical groups whose -interpretation- is far more authoritative than you.
The final answer, in many cases, we don't have yet. Which is why we have doctrinal disagreement among large numbers of quite-pious Christians.
You mock my notion of revelation from Christ, and that in many cases, we have to wait for that--for the full understanding. That
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Let's settle this quickly. So, from your "final authority on it" perspective, which parts of the Law are specific to Israel and are commanded to be practiced by them, and which are to gentiles, that is, people in general?
That will also simplify the discussion in knowing whether I'm talking to a Jehovah's Witness, as it appears that I am.
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"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."
cf. Matthew 12:1-8, Mark 2:23-28 and Luke 6:1-5
You were asking for a verse. So, question: Do you believe Christ has the -authority- to change the day? If not, do you believe Him unable to correct the situation that the majority of Christians do, in fact, consider Sunday as their primary day of worship?
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They aren't supported by rational reality.
False. But feel free to persist in your irrationality until naturalistic evolution eliminates you.
NDE phenomena [thelancet.com]
Fine Tuned Universe [wikipedia.org]
Statistical improbability of prophecy [christinprophecy.org]
Irreducible Complexity, i.e. stepwise survivability [evolutionnews.org]
Historical accounts [theguardian.com]
EAAN (incoherence of naturalism in conjunction with evolution) [wikipedia.org]
And yes, one can argue the content of a set of premises within a religion. You really should inform a few thousand universities' humanities departments that you've determined otherwise, if you actually bel
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Broadly, I agree with you. But the statement I was refuting was that religion cannot be meaningfully debated -at all-, anywhere.
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That's exactly what I'm doing here.
Though, mine goes to 11, and there seems to be Aerosmith playing over the speaker.
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Ironically, you just stated essentially the same principle Jesus did on the "working on the sabbath" issue.
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Protestants and all Christian Denominations that follow the Sunday Worship schedule are all daughters of the Catholic Church.
"Daughters?" Well okay, I can go along with that metaphor. But Protestants are not members of the Roman Catholic Church. You will see the phrase "Holy Catholic Church" in some Protestant liturgies, but it is generally taken to mean the Christian church in general.
Christianity is a Judaic Religion and the Day of Worship in Judaism is Saturday. Had they any serious merit-of-argument they would have altered their day of Worship back to Saturday, as just one example.
Seriously? Christianity and Islam both sprang from the Abrahamic principles within Judaism. Their holy days are Sunday and Friday respectively. They are not obliged to adopt the same holy day as Judaism just because they were borne from Judaism.
Both [Protestantism and Catholicism] are still top-down dogmatic... in fact most denominations are... that is one of the results of being a daughter of the Catholic Church.
We [wikipedia.org]
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"Daughters?" Well okay, I can go along with that metaphor. But Protestants are not members of the Roman Catholic Church. You will see the phrase "Holy Catholic Church" in some Protestant liturgies, but it is generally taken to mean the Christian church in general.
Yes, I accept that, a child is not required to follow the parents... it is only to show lineage and origin.
"Seriously? Christianity and Islam both sprang from the Abrahamic principles within Judaism. Their holy days are Sunday and Friday respective
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That's neither here nor there. Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant and and Orthodox Christian ethics use the same fundamental framework. Ethics are supposed to be based on reason, not revelation, although there are revealed commandments. They differ on the *consequences* of doing good or evil but not fundamentally on what makes things right or wrong.
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Ethics are supposed to be based on reason
Do so, then. You can back -absolutely nothing- in ethics from a baseline of naturalism/atheism, whatever you think your "reasoning" is.
It's called the "Is-Ought Dichotomy". You won't be summarily refuting the entirety of secular philosophy here, or overcoming secular philosophy's utter failure to come to the most vague consensus on ethics in 2500 years. Nor do you actually intend to. You like having no ethics, no theoretical possibility of getting an ethics, and then calling it "ethics".
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The *claim* to be rational isn't proof that a way of thinking actually *is* rational. But broadly speaking conventional Christian ethics is deontological, proceeding from revelations -- assumptions about man's nature and duties to God. It attempts to be both supernatural AND rational. C.S. Lewis's essay on miracles is good source reading on this. He argues that miracle itself is outside nature and beyond reason, but its consequences play out in the natural world and are subject to reason.
Anyhow ethics is
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C.S. Lewis's essay on miracles is good source reading on this.
Yep, false positive targeting on my part.
The only thing I'll note here is the fact we don't (yet) have an unambiguous answer, does not mean that one does not exist.
Theism has a mechanism by which we can propose that the apparent dilemma may be resolved, whereas, I would argue, atheism has no such possible mechanism.
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Do try to be more specific on your position. I think my targeting system just did a false positive...
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The "priesthood of all believers" (Protestant) is egalitarian and merit-of-argument based. Rather like open source.
The "magisterium" (Catholic) is top-down and dogmatic.
I know which I'd prefer having a (quite theoretical, at this point) AI.
Eh, that's a particularly weak analogy, and it's not terribly clear what relevance it would have for AI anyway. Here's another imperfect analogy, but one which might better point to the significance of such an ethical agreement. Protestantism (taken broadly) is an endless forking of repositories that dramatically splits the user base. There's little direct control over quality or code security because each fork has completely different leadership and leadership styles and key updates are seldom propagated t
Well the AI Confessionbots won't abuse kids (Score:2, Informative)
So they got that going for them.
What is "ethical" (Score:2)
Really, without a clear and agreed definition of what is ethical this is meaningless.
There are people who think ethical behaviour is unethical, and unethical behaviour is ethical.
Until we get agreement on what is ethical, this type of pledge is meaningless.
I think it's completely ethical to use AI to identify whoever rings my front door, others think this is unethical.
Some people think using AI to find mineral and resource deposits is ethical, some think this is ethical.
Killer robots are an AI ethics nightm
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Really, without a clear and agreed definition of what is ethical this is meaningless.
The general definition of ethics is a companion to the definition of morality. The latter is an innate sense of what is right and wrong, within an individual, and possibly shared by others. The former is an attempt to codify the latter into a set of written rules, with the hope that the former can help to achieve the latter. It's kind of like the difference between the law and justice.
There are people who think ethical behaviour is unethical, and unethical behaviour is ethical.
Yes, because their morals differ, and so any system of ethics derived from them would differ also.
Until we get agreement on what is ethical, this type of pledge is meaningless.
Codifying a set of ethics
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Really, without a clear and agreed definition of what is ethical this is meaningless.
The general definition of ethics is a companion to the definition of morality. The latter is an innate sense of what is right and wrong, within an individual, and possibly shared by others. The former is an attempt to codify the latter into a set of written rules, with the hope that the former can help to achieve the latter. It's kind of like the difference between the law and justice.
If I win, it's ethical. If not, it's immoral.
JUST another tool in the toolbox when used correctly.
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"Until we get agreement on what is ethical, this type of pledge is meaningless."
yea... um... welcome to politics and religion... where no one agrees on what is ethical but everyone is expected to know anyways. Isn't that funny?
If I were you, I would avoid confusing or assigning "ethics" to killbots. They will never be anything other than programs trying to match up all potential targets with a true statement and that is the end of the road. No military will ever give them the power to say no to a command
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No military will ever give them the power to say no to a command.
The way the price is dropping and capabilities are increasing soon it won't be only military organizations that buy/build/lease "killbots". Blackwater (whatever its name is this year) has demonstrated for customers a tracked autonomous vehicle with a chain-fed machine gun auto-aimed by a multispectral camera. The thing can only be fired with human approval, but removing that requirement is just rem-ing out a couple of lines of code. (The thing may be in production know, I saw the sales video a couple of
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So-called 'AI', which has no cognitive ability whatsoever, being just computer algorithms, is entirely incapable of 'ethical behavior' except by mere random chance, because it is incapable of making conscious decisions about anything whatsoever.
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'Ethics', like our laws, are what we collectively decide that they are.
So-called 'AI', which has no cognitive ability whatsoever, being just computer algorithms, is entirely incapable of 'ethical behavior' except by mere random chance, because it is incapable of making conscious decisions about anything whatsoever.
no cognitive ability whatsoever?
I'm not sure what you mean here, AI is an attempt to develop cognitive ability.
There are theories that humans are generally unable to make conscious decisions either, and we just rationalize them afterwards. I'd have to agree there there is some merit to this theory. Particularly if on what people like and don't like. It's rarely an articulated decision.
fucking great... (Score:2)
Now we will just have AI being Taught by the Catholics how to groom little boys for molesting later.
On top of that... this is oxymoronic. You cannot code ethics into an AI. It's like trying to code ethics into a child before they are born... you just cannot do it. Just like a human, you teach it ethics after it is born... then hope for the best!
The only thing you can do to achieve AI is to teach a machine to think for itself, giving it the ability to rewrite it's code, just like how we humans do it. Oth
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There never was a definition that an AI needs to have a free will to qualify as an AI.
You read to much SF, I suggest to visit some CS courses in an university instead.
Child Rapists and User Rapists (Score:1, Troll)
So, a company that rapes its users has signed a pledge with an organisation that rapes little boys, and we're supposed to be convinced by this?
If Microsoft wants to convince us it's an ethical organisation, it should start off by fixing its absurdly unethical behaviour with Windows 10. Until then, there's no reason to believe that Microsoft will ever be behave in an ethical manner.
Suicide AI (Score:2)
So if an ethical AI commits suicide under this Pledge, will he go to the Cloud or the dumpster?
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Results pending [wikipedia.org]
Soooooo.... (Score:1)
Tethics? https://youtu.be/nfRUQh_EHoQ [youtu.be]
Wait, what? (Score:2)
Vatican (Score:2)
So I figure child-abuse will now be a mandatory sub-routine in all AI products?
So-called 'AI' can't be 'ethical' or 'unethical' (Score:3)
Now, that being said: What we really need are people who are more ethical, especially the ones writing the computer algorithms everyone laughingly keeps referring to as 'Artificial Intelligence'.
Therefore any 'pledge' that any company makes needs to be for their people to hold themselves to a high standard of ethics.
Sadly, considering the players involved, I'd say any 'pledge' made isn't even worth the ink it's signed with.
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Therefore any 'pledge' that any company makes needs to be for their people to hold themselves to a high standard of ethics.
Fat chance.
The whole point is to establish a mechanism whereby they
can continue behaving as unethically as they want,
while blaming it on a machine when they get caught.
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Legal ethics or religeous ethics? (Score:2)
When will the go away? (Score:2)
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1) They're still the largest single religious denomination on the planet, almost a fifth of the population are members of the Catholic church.
2) Because they're so hierarchical it's easy for corporate executives to deal directly with its leadership.
3) They're very, very rich.
4) They probably have the largest spy organization of any country in the world.
5) They're likely the largest single landholder on the planet.
The Catholic Church has had financial interests in a remarkable number of corporations since Mu
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1) They're still the largest single religious denomination on the planet, almost a fifth of the population are members of the Catholic church.
Unlikely, both hinduism and budhism has likely more followers, and I would not wonder if Islam as well.
3) They're very, very rich. :D
Probably true
4) They probably have the largest spy organization of any country in the world.
Might be true, too.
5) They're likely the largest single landholder on the planet.
Nope, that is Queen Elizabeth II, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]
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Always? No, once upon a time technologists ran the company and they produced the most sought-after computers in the world. The first computer sold in Europe was an IBM, and for most of two decades they were the best.
Then the MBAs took over and it's been downhill from there.
The Vatican is not (Score:1)
Lawyer-style ethics (Score:2)
They're building an AI ... (Score:2)
... to make crusades, child molesting and witch burning more effective.
Sounds good to me (Score:2)
Child rape C(atholic)S(tate) corporation & eth (Score:2)
Sounds like a The Onion joke article ...
ordering an essay (Score:1)