Lifeboat Foundation

John Mullan, professor of English literature at University College London, wrote an article on The Guardian titled “We need robots to have morals. Could Shakespeare and Austen help?”.

Using great literature to teach ethics to machines is a dangerous game. The classics are a moral minefield.

When he wrote the stories in I, Robot in the 1940s, Isaac Asimov imagined a world in which robots do all humanity’s tedious or unpleasant jobs for them, but where their powers have to be restrained. They are programmed to obey three laws. A robot may not injure another human being, even through inaction; a robot must obey a human being (except to contradict the previous law); a robot must protect itself (unless this contradicts either of the previous laws).

Roboethics wants to answer the question of who or what is going to be held responsible for the actions of the robotic creations of engineers and designers until robots become moral actors, if that ever happens.

I’m excited to share my new article for The New York Times on the brave new world of #cyborg ability and coming #transhumanism sports:

I wonder whether the sporting industry might create some new competitions where — just like technology — performance-enhancing drugs are encouraged. Innovations like the new oxygen-infused injection, which might one day allow humans to hold their breath for 15 to 30 minutes, could allow competitive free divers to reach new depths, showing just how far the human body can go.

Critics will complain that the human body was not designed to compete using enhancements and that it violates the code given to us by the ancient Greeks and their first Olympics Games, where “arête,” or excellence and moral virtue, was cherished. As a longtime competitive athlete, I appreciate the sportsmanship angle; but I also think that in the 21st century we can develop both the drugs and the technology to see humans compete in new sporting events that are even more exciting than their predecessors.

Continue reading “The Brave New World of Sports” »

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, and the reversal test.

We can evolve bacteria, plants and animals. Is it ethical to evolve the human body? I say yes.

And it becomes a moral imperative because it’s going to be really hard to live on Mars if we don’t fundamentally modify the human body. Right? You go from one cell, mom and dad coming together to make one cell, in a cascade to 10 trillion cells. We don’t know, if you change the gravity substantially, if the same thing will happen to create your body. We do know that if you expose our bodies as they currently are to a lot of radiation, we will die. So as you’re thinking of that, you have to really redesign things just to get to Mars. Forget about the moons of Neptune or Jupiter.

Continue reading “What will humans look like in 100 years?” »

But in many ways, the field of AI ethics remains limited. Researchers say they are blocked from investigating many systems thanks to trade secrecy protections and laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). As interpreted by the courts, that law criminalizes breaking a website or platform’s terms of service, an often necessary step for researchers trying to audit online AI systems for unfair biases.

Whittaker acknowledges the potential for the AI ethics movement to be co-opted. But as someone who has fought for accountability from within Silicon Valley and outside it, Whittaker says she has seen the tech world begin to undergo a deep transformation in recent years. “You have thousands and thousands of workers across the industry who are recognizing the stakes of their work,” Whittaker explains. “We don’t want to be complicit in building things that do harm. We don’t want to be complicit in building things that benefit only a few and extract more and more from the many.”

It may be too soon to tell if that new consciousness will precipitate real systemic change. But facing academic, regulatory and internal scrutiny, it is at least safe to say that the industry won’t be going back to the adolescent, devil-may-care days of “move fast and break things” anytime soon.

Continue reading “Meet the Researchers Fighting to Make Sure Artificial Intelligence Is a Force for Good” »

But observers warn that there are several factors that could stymie the nation’s plans, including a lack of contribution to the theories used to develop the tools underpinning the field, and a reticence by Chinese companies to invest in the research needed to make fundamental breakthroughs.

The country’s artificial-intelligence research is growing in quality, but the field still plays catch up to the United States in terms of high-impact papers, people and ethics.

We need to have higher ethics for robotic beings because if the superintelligence in digital form becomes reality we will need to have better ethics around robot rights. We could have literally a terminator situation but we could make a the vision possibly we do not need to have them be slaves to use but rightful citizens.

Each notice cited the same section of these guidelines, which states: “Content that displays the deliberate infliction of animal suffering or the forcing of animals to fight is not allowed on YouTube.”

It goes on to state: “Examples include, but are not limited to, dog fighting and cock fighting.”

Continue reading “YouTube is deleting videos of robots fighting because of ‘animal cruelty’” »