Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for November 27, 2019

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Authored by @remlaps

An argument that AIs should receive the same ethical protections as animals; IBM's project debater AI teams with humans and debates against itself at Cambridge University; Speculation that Virgin Galactic may be pursuing point to point travel between locations on Earth; A chess piece found in Jordan may be the oldest known; and a Steem essay offering tips for selecting a secure laptop

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  1. AIs should have the same ethical protections as animals - In this essay, John Basl and Eric Schwitzgebel argue that because artificial intelligence (AI) systems will soon be as cognitively sophisticated as dogs or mice, it is time to start seriously thinking about rights for AI systems. Comparing the research field to biology, the authors point out that medical and biological research has protections in place to determine what research can be conducted with animals, but AI will soon face some of the same ethical challenges without any equivalent forms of scrutiny. The essay further argues that it's not possible to limit protections just to conscious AIs because consciousness isn't well-enough understood to be reliably identified in AI systems, especially because AI consciousness might be very different from other forms of consciousness that we're familiar with. Finally, the essay notes that ethical standards for humans and animals were developed in the wake of abusive research, but that we have a chance to do better this time, by avoiding the abuses before they happen, and proposes the founding of ethical committees to conduct oversight. Here are the concluding sentences:
    It is likely that such committees will judge all current AI research permissible. On most mainstream theories of consciousness, we are not yet creating AI with conscious experiences meriting ethical consideration. But we might – possibly soon – cross that crucial ethical line. We should be prepared for this.
    h/t Communications of the ACM

  2. IBM's AI debating machine debated itself on whether AI is good or evil. Its creators say that could help human learning. - In a debate at Cambridge University, IBM's artificial intelligence software assisted human debaters on both sides of the motion, "This House Believes AI Will Bring More Harm Than Good". Noam Slonim, from the research team, says that this technology may eventually have uses in government and in businesses. The AI's previous debates have been one-on-one against human opponents. This is the first time that the AI has teamed with humans or argued against itself. For training, the AI received 1,100 anonymous arguments that were collected from the Cambridge Union community. According to the article, the project debater AI managed to include a joke in its arguments, but it also had problems with repetition, keeping up with human arguers, and it failed to provide details in support of its arguments.

    Here is a video of the debate:

Related: IBM's Project Debater was previously covered in Interesting Links: March 22, 2019


  • Virgin Galactic’s real goal may be point-to-point travel around Earth - Nearly a month ago, Virgin Galactic went public on the NY Stock Exchange, offering investors a chance to own stock in the space tourism industry. Recent statements by the company's chairman, Chamath Palihapitiya, however, suggest that the company's ultimate path to profitability may also include point to point travel between distant locations on the Earth. In particular, Palihapitiya said, "When we start commercial operations, we will be the only company in the world who will be flying paid passengers at hypersonic speeds." and he pointed out that the company's SpaceShipTwo will be able to travel from Los Angeles to Shanghai in less than two hours. Just to take tourists to space isn't expected to be available as a product until 2020, so point to point travel is still a difficult challenge, but there are hints that it may be on the roadmap.

  • A carved rock found in Jordan may be the oldest known chess piece - The piece, found in Jordan by John Peter Oleson, is about 1,300 years old, and it has horn-like projections resembling rooks that have been discovered in other nearby sites. It was excavated from Humayma, and dated to between 680 and 749. At that time, the site was owned and operated by an Islamic family. According to historical records, the game of chess was created in India about 1,400 years ago, and it may have been carried westward by diplomats before becoming very popular in the early Islamic world. The earliest board games are believed to have been developed in Eurasia about 4,000 years ago. The piece is now stored at University of Victoria. h/t archaeology.org

  • STEEM Key features and best practices to look out for when purchasing a laptop - In this post, @twr suggests five features to look for when selecting a secure laptop. They are: biometric authentication, smart card reader, hardware encryption, a lock slot, Intel Vpro. Finally, the essay also points out that Chromebook's operating system was designed with security in mind. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been assigned to this post for @twr.)

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    "... (AI) systems will soon be as cognitively sophisticated as dogs or mice..."

    Wake me up when that happens. I vehemently disagree extant technology approaches anything of the kind, and the practically infantile grasp of what consciousness even is mirrors our brutally simplistic technology compared to natural living things. The most advance AI today isn't even a fraction of the complexity and advanced integration of a single cell. Far from dogs and mice, extant AI is so far below even the independent capacity of Archaea, relics from the earliest expression of life on Earth, that the attainment of relative parity remains presently inconceivable. I don't think I've read a better example of hubris in science.

    "...committees will judge all current AI research permissible."

    I do not foresee a global totalitarian jurisdiction eventuating anytime in the foreseeable future competent to prevent research from being permitted outside their jurisdiction, or despite it.

    The next article reveals just how crude AI remains at even parsing debate.

    The last article seems to not acknowledge factory backdoors, and how Chrome facilitates surveillance by Goolag, but I'll have a read at the source, and comment further there. I note the nearly existential potential of biometric ID to harm individuals when malicious actors gain that data. India has inadvertantly revealed their biometric ID system has caused enormous suffering when victims very biometric data was used to profit bad actors.

    Thanks!

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    I had similar thoughts about the first article. My reaction was stronger at the beginning, when I thought they were suggesting legal protections, but it tapered off when I realized that they seemed to be mostly referring to institutional standards.

    I agree about global enforcement for AI ethical standards. We see something similar already with some of the genetic research coming out of places like China.

    I was also sort-of surprised by the inclusion of chromebook in the list in the last article, just because of Google's overall data-grabiness, but I'm not very familiar with the chromebook, so I didn't reach any conclusions. Good point about the extreme danger from compromise of biometric data, too.

    Thanks for the comment!

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