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A Humanist Perspective on Artificial Intelligence

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A Humanist Perspective on Artificial Intelligence Draft for Comment A Humanist Perspective on Artificial Intelligence This paper attempts to explore some of the practical and ethical challenges that the development of artificial intelligence (AI)1 — or as some prefer, ‘augmented intelligence’2 — poses for society in general, and for humanists in particular. I don’t claim to be an expert on AI. However, I have a professional background in information management and I have spent much of the last two years looking into the threat posed by 'fake news' and disinformation (which is facilitated by AI). And I’m concerned by some of the ethical dilemmas that are emerging. 1 Setting the Context To set the context, this first section provides a brief summary of the status of AI and the benefits that can and are beginning to flow from its deployment — benefits that clearly need to be set against the costs and potential risks, including possible ‘unknown unknowns’. 1.1 A Layperson’s Overview of AI Most people today spend a significant part of their lives on the Web, especially the young. We share our thoughts and photos on social media, and we shop, bank and get our news and entertainment on line; we use Google Maps to navigate; call Uber drivers; order pizzas; book flights; record our fitness... But how many of us really appreciate the extent to which our behaviour and choices are analysed, sold and exploited by powerful corporations using AI? This is what Shoshana Zuboff calls ‘surveillance capitalism’ — a force she says is “as profoundly undemocratic as it is exploitative.”3 An enormous amount has been written about AI in recent years and the diverse range of challenges that its development poses for society and the human race.4 This includes an excellent (free) online course and papers and articles on how to optimise the benefits, counter negative side-effects, and avoid or minimise potential threats. Literally thousands of agencies, institutes, universities and companies are involved in some capacity in this work5 — a report in Dec 2017 estimated that there could be 300,000 AI researchers and practitioners worldwide and a market demand for ‘millions’. The number of published papers and patents on AI is growing rapidly.6 Investment in AI and ‘smart’ technology (see Box 1) is massive, and its ‘fruits’ are already widely deployed and celebrated, however we are only at the beginning of the adventure,7 and no one can predict the impact that this technology will be making on our lives in ten let alone 50 years’ time. It is not too late for us to decide what sort of world we would like to see, and what sort of standards and laws should apply, but it’s going to be a Herculean task to control AI as more and more organisations — and politicians and criminals — come to realise what it can do. 1.2 The Benefits of AI In essence, AI amplifies human ingenuity with: • reasoning — enabling us to learn and form conclusions from imperfect data; • understanding — enabling us to interpret the meaning of data, including text, voice and images; and • interaction — engaging with people in natural ways. This means: Box 1: The Internet of Things* • faster, more accurate, more efficient and more Few consumers are aware that many smart reliable machines; devices in their home/office/car are designed to • ability to work in challenging environments (e.g. collect and share potentially private data as part space, the deep ocean, and locations with high of their normal operation, and that in the radiation levels); process they use AI to learn about our behaviour. As more and more products come better/wider communication via smart devices8 and • equipped with cameras, microphones, social media;9 accelerometers, thermal sensors, biometric • useful services — medical diagnosis; translation; analysis and GPS, the consequences for our 10 voice, facial & image recognition; land privacy/security are potentially enormous. 11 management / crop production; security ; climate Here’s an example: change modelling; fraud protection; making investment decisions; health care (not least robot- Google and Amazon have secured a range of assisted surgery); delivering goods; virtual reality; patents relating to potential future functions of robot waiters; booking appointments — the list is their home assistant products — one is a endless (the links are intended solely as illustrative); method for extracting keywords from ambient speech which would then trigger targeted doing away with mind-numbing work (long distance • advertising. Amazon has a patent allowing its driving; data entry; number crunching; quality control; virtual assistant Alexa to decipher a user’s etc.). physical characteristics including accent, ethnic AI should also release people to do more interesting, origin, emotion, gender, age, even background creative and socially-productive work, but only if noise. One can only speculate on how data mechanisms are there for them to retrain/requalify. collected in this way might be applied in a ‘hostile’ (Home Office-type) environment — or 1.3 Issues of Concern by a criminal, terrorist or autocratic regime... Potential Social Impact * The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of devices such as home appliances, industrial • how AI — and organisations controlling AI and big equipment and vehicles that contain electronics, data services — shape and mediate our democracy software and actuators, which are connected to the and the norms and values of society may be far from internet and can interact and exchange data. desirable or acceptable; • the unregulated micro-targeting of individuals on social media in political and advertising campaigns;12 A Humanist Perspective on AI Draft for Comment Page: 2 • AI-empowered surveillance and the use of facial-recognition (FR) software without informed consent;13 • AI assisted social media that can contribute to misunderstanding, intolerance and polarisation, and for some, heightened social isolation, self-harm and possibly worse;14 • job losses / unemployment and people having to cope with more leisure time; • unforeseen failure of AI technology leading to financial losses, injuries and or deaths (see Box 2). There are also questions about who decides who lives and who dies — the classic Trolley Problem.15 Just how do you teach a machine to ‘think’ ethically? Profiteering & Criminal Misuse • tech companies and criminals using AI/big data to cheat the system16 or compromise people’s privacy, security and or financial wellbeing17 — without regulatory constraints, the former is likely to become even more dominant and over-powerful (to the detriment of the overall economy / increased inequality); the risk with the latter (and malign state actors and their proxies) is that they will steal or damage our assets; • deep-fake scams (altering photos and video footage, mimicking voices, creating ultra-real ‘fake news’18) and Box 2: Teething Problems? the risk of “creating a world where nothing we see or • Within 24 of Microsoft launching ‘Tay’ (in hear can be taken on trust, and where ‘fake news’ Mar. 2016) the bot started sending offensive becomes the default rather than the outlier”;19 comments and had to be withdrawn after Cyber Warfare & Military Application people bombarded it with misogynistic, racist and Donald Trumpist tweets. • external interference in political processes to undermine/denigrate democracy, including subverting • In Aug. 2017 two experimental Facebook elections and encouraging dissent and polarisation — chatbots (‘Bob’ & ‘Alice’), designed to and attempting to cover up ‘accidents’ or ‘mistakes’ negotiate with one another, started (the downing of M17 over Ukraine; the Skripal developing their own coded language that poisoning, etc.) by circulating multiple fake conspiracy was incomprehensible to researchers. theories to cause maximum confusion and create • In Nov 2017 a problem developed with ‘reality apathy’; the Turkish-English version of Google • autonomous weapon development, which promises to Translate which led it to convert the gender- change warfare as we know it; neutral pronoun ‘o’ into a ‘he’ when in the same sentence as ‘doctor’ or ‘hard working’, Generic Concerns and a ‘she’ when ‘lazy’ or ‘nurse’ appeared. • the potential to de-anonymise data (e.g. by analysing • In Mar. 2018 a pedestrian was killed by your postcode, or even the way you walk or type); an Uber autonomous vehicle in Arizona, • the use of ‘black box’ algorithms, resulting in unfair or raising concerns not only about the safety of biased treatment of individuals/clients, or unforeseen, AVs but also their ethical implications. potentially catastrophic error; and Many more examples can be found with a • super-intelligence (Artificial General Intelligence/The simple (AI-assisted) search on the internet. Singularity) and the possibility of an AI takeover. This last point is highly contentious.20 Tony Brewer (South East London Humanists) points out that “leaving aside any discussion of whether or when such a Singularity might be achieved it is clear that a) all AI development is moving in the direction of the Singularity, b) that if the Singularity is ever achieved it will be the last system that humans will ever develop, since an AI system could always do it quicker and better, and c) AI development will not stop there, subsequent systems will be super-intelligent. The impact of these characteristics on humanity will be profound and we should be considering them right now.”21 And regardless of whether super-intelligence is ever developed, we should be aware of the possible implications of quantum computing coming of age with its potential to crack virtually any password or encryption.22 China It is perhaps worth noting here that China’s growing dominance in the field of AI — and its ability/intent to capture and collect vast amounts of data on its citizens — also raises profound questions about how the country might deploy its knowledge/market dominance to promote its own particular branch of autocratic rule/control.23 Western values such as human rights, freedom of speech, tolerance, liberty and reciprocal respect could well be side-lined or ignored in the face of discipline and order (which autocratic regimes sponsor and promote).
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