Humans for Transparency in Artificial Intelligence

[Bill Hibbard]

Article:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2016/03/11/transparent-ai/

Petition:
http://www.icog-labs.com/transparent_ai/

[Vaibhav Gavane]

On 3/11/16, Bill Hibbard <te...@ssec.wisc.edu> wrote:
> Article:
> http://hplusmagazine.com/2016/03/11/transparent-ai/
>

From the article: "Transparency would also inform people about
military uses of AI, generating social pressure for treaties similar
to those banning biological and chemical weapons."

I'm sorry but this is absolutely ridiculous. "AI" is nothing more than
information-processing, and if you feel that AI should be regulated by
international treaties then I suppose you should also lobby for
regulation of supercomputers and quantum computers and so on...

Vaibhav

[Bill Hibbard]

Note that our article is advocating for transparency
so that people can make informed choices about issues
such as military AI.

Saying that AI is nothing more than information
processing is like saying that nuclear bombs are
nothing more than explosives. It's a question of
scale.

Note also this open letter:
http://futureoflife.org/open-letter-autonomous-weapons-full-list/

Best wishes,
Bill

> --
> Before posting, please read this: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/magic-list/_nC7PGmCAE4
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MAGIC" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to magic-list+...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to magic...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/magic-list.
>

[Vaibhav Gavane]

On 3/11/16, Bill Hibbard <te...@ssec.wisc.edu> wrote:
> Saying that AI is nothing more than information
> processing is like saying that nuclear bombs are
> nothing more than explosives. It's a question of
> scale.
>

So, please answer the question I implied: Are you also going to
advocate for the regulation of supercomputers, warehouse-scale data
centers, quantum computers etc.? Do you want government/international
inspection of *all* private computing facilities?

Vaibhav

[Bill Hibbard]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2016, Vaibhav Gavane wrote:

To be clear, our article advocates for transparency in
what AI is used for and how it works so an informed
public can decide what restrictions to put on the
technology. The authors recognize that there are
complex issues in whether and how transparency is a
acheived. At this point we are only hoping to generate
opinion in favor of transparency.

Speaking for myself, I speculate that acheiving AI
transparency will be a matter of scale, just as with
weapons (and as with financial institutions). There
could be monitoring or inspection depending on scale
of computing power. This situation could evolve over
time in ways that are difficult to predict now. For
example, over the last couple decades alternatives to
banks evolved and it took regulators a while to catch
up (and subject to the debate between people for and
against financial regulation).

On thing is clear, the situation will be very complex.
At this point, we are only hoping to demonstrate
public opinion in favor of AI transparency.

Again apeaking only for myself, my political instincts
are somewhat libertarian. But I have come to believe
that a full libertarian approach to AI would generate a
disaster for humanity.

Bill