from Doug on AI--pause or ban research...

[John Raymaker]

Thanks John - I'm sure that most of those working on these tools agree on the precepts to pay attention, be intelligent and even responsibly act.  The loving call to righteousness and justice, however, is gracefully given - and maybe not to many!  It would seem in any case that an organization like the Church is needed to introduce an element of morality.  

Scott Alexander posted an essay yesterday on how we should respond to AI development - 

"Constraint consequentialists believe that you should try to do good things that improve the world, unless those break hard-and-fast rules (“deontological bars”).

"For example, you shouldn’t assassinate democratically-elected leaders, even very bad ones."

. . .

“Don’t kill people” is a gimme. What other deontological bars constrain our actions?

"I’ve been thinking about this lately because of an internal debate in the AI safety movement. Some people want to work with the least irresponsible AI labs, helping them “win” the “race” and hopefully do a better job creating superintelligence than their competitors. Others want to pause or ban AI research - the exact details vary from plan to plan, but assume they’ve already thought of and written hundred-page papers addressing your obvious objections. Different people have different opinions about which strategy is more likely to help, and it’s possible to coexist and pursue both at once. But in fact, both sides are a little nervous that the other is breaking a deontological bar."

He curiously concludes with this reference to an old "Prisoner's Dilemma" post.

"Of course, the Early Christian Strategy is to ignore all of this and do the right thing in every case, including unilateral military disarmament. But they can’t keep getting away with it, can they?"  

Doug

[Hugh Williams]

Doug (et al),

I'll ask you directly (and others) the question embedded in my post from May 4 -

... thinking back on Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si” which had to do equally with both environmental and social issues (‘climate change’ and ‘inequality’).

This good Pope insisted that these two issues be discussed together and not be separated; I'm insisting the same for AI, i.e., it be discussed with 'inequality', always, and not be separated.

... we seem to continue having capitalism and its advocates assuming and even insisting that ‘there is no alternative’, so that then it must be some sort of ‘technological fix’ that is going to allow 'us', or some of 'us', to somehow ‘continue on …

this of course has some bearing upon the relevance of Lonergan's theory of economy, along with the more recent and challenging AIRR(2023) text ...

but I wonder ... because I suspect you are closer to what is actually happening with AI and with the minds and hearts of those working in it than I am ...

just how do you see it?

thanks

Hugh 

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[Doug Mounce]

Thanks for asking Hugh.  I don't know much more than anyone else about LLMs.  They give good search results which is something I just take for granted now.  An article about Claude said they were trying to teach it virtue ethics and that reminded me of a recent NDPReview where an author said virtue ethics and liberalism are incompatible (something about the requirement for education and how virtue ethics rejects pluralism).  I follow Emily Bender at the UW - she has a book coming out, the AI Con, about technology sold under this banner, and "why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world."

I also wanted to mention a good Yale University course by Paul North on Marx' Capital.  The first lecture gives a sense of the sweeping dominance capital has that resists any alternatives. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c0IoFWJJJA&list=PLh9mgdi4rNewd_0qe4c2lkzXZZQka_QnZ

~/

https://staff.washington.edu/mounce/

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[PIERRE WHALON]

Hi Doug and Hugh,

Doug, my experience of research on Claude, Mistral, Chat GPT, and Gemini is that you get a lot of errors. Made-up stories, inexact descriptions, varying from machine to machine.

Hugh, thank you for the shout-out!

Pierre

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[Hugh Williams]

Pierre, Doug, et al,

I'm still working on what I hope to be a constructively critical review of the AIRR text.

It really has stirred things up for me with respect to 'Lonergan and Marx' (and thus on this issue of faith and ideology).

I'm finding that the issue is not really, in the first instance, an issue of 'faith' at all,

but rather one of 'ideology'. And here I'm following closely Juan Segundo's profound treatment of this complex issue

in his "Liberation of Theology" ....

(I believe that there is some affinity to Lonergan's treatment of 'faith and belief' ...)

And so I continue to recycle several items for everyone - first this mention to Doug

of how Pope Francis in an encyclical, no less, inter-linked the environmental/climate crisis and the problem of economic inequality.

... and I ask people interested in/fascinated with AI how they see this interconnection ...

and what usually happens is  - either they tend to go silent, or they only talk about the technology in some way or other ...

but unfortunately inequality is not seriously grappled with ...

this for me is now a serious ideological issue in Christianity and beyond. (I'm deeply suspicious that there is this deep ideological

assumption that 'the technology will allow 'us' to simply carry on as we have' ....)

The AIRR text, at least, does not avoid the issue.

In Canada there are three very recent reports on the economic metrics and they simply are economically and morally outrageous.

this, again, is a link to one of them for those interested ...

https://www.oxfam.ca/publication/canadas-wealth-inequality-report/

As did happen with many Christians in Latin America not that long ago, this issue became something that was no longer avoidable or acceptable ...

After the Bishops' conference of Medellin, it was even said to be a situation of 'serious sin' ...

... yes, some time has passed since then ...

nevertheless, I'm still of the view that there is now perhaps a second chance, 

at least speaking in and of the Canadian context, to take this issue much more seriously.

It will not be easy ...

Hugh 

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