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15 - The ethics of artificial intelligence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2014

By
Nick Bostrom  and
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Edited by
Keith Frankish  and
William M. Ramsey
Nick Bostrom
Affiliation:
Oxford University
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Affiliation:
Machine Intelligence Research Institute
Keith Frankish
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
William M. Ramsey
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
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Summary

The possibility of creating thinking machines raises a host of ethical issues, related both to ensuring that such machines do not harm humans and other morally relevant beings, and to the moral status of the machines themselves. This chapter surveys some of the ethical challenges that may arise as we create artificial intelligences of various kinds and degrees.

Ethics in machine learning and other domain-specific AI algorithms

Imagine, in the near future, a bank using a machine learning algorithm to recommend mortgage applications for approval. A rejected applicant brings a lawsuit against the bank, alleging that the algorithm is discriminating racially against mortgage applicants. The bank replies that this is impossible, since the algorithm is deliberately blinded to the race of the applicants. Indeed, that was part of the bank’s rationale for implementing the system. Even so, statistics show that the bank’s approval rate for black applicants has been steadily dropping. Submitting ten apparently equally qualified genuine applicants (as determined by a separate panel of human judges) shows that the algorithm accepts white applicants and rejects black applicants. What could possibly be happening?

Keywords

superintelligencemachine ethicsmoral statussuperhuman chess playerethical challengesartificial intelligencesDeep Blue's programmers
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence , pp. 316 - 334
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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