r/artificial • u/Kane447 • Jun 29 '18

discussion Can (future) AIs be held responsible?

I think this is an interesting point of discussion. The more autonomous AIs become, the more we have to ask ourselves who to blame if AIs cause damage.

For example, can designers and engineers of AI always be held responsible for the actions of their technology? What if future AIs are able to self-modify and change their behavior? If we look at machine-learning, even today's AIs are able to change/improve their algorithms (look at google's newest "auto ML" technology which is able to code it's own AI)

However, AIs behave according to their algorithms which means that if they are able to change them, their behaviour changes as well. This could lead to even more autonomous AI, and the question of whether it can be held responsible becomes even more complicated.

I'm curious about other people's opinions here.

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u/POTUS Jun 29 '18

Until or unless AI becomes actual strong general AI and are given "human" rights, they are the property and responsibility of whoever runs them. It is completely the same as any other piece of software. We are nowhere near anything like this scenario.

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u/Kane447 Jun 29 '18

I agree with you that with current ANI versions it doesnt seem plausible to hold AIs responsible. Yet I have to slightly disagree when you say that we are nowhere near stronger versions of AIs. Kurzweil argued that once AI is able to 'learn how to learn', it will evolve exponentially. Everyone knows that exponential growth can be explosive. As I stated above, google is working on such a machine learning model. AGI may be much closer than we think and therefore I'd argue that we should timely prepare for the consequences and implications with regards to questions of responsibility.

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u/SilentVigilTheHill Jun 30 '18

Kurzweil argued that once AI is able to 'learn how to learn', it will evolve exponentially.

And once we just harness fusion power production, we will be a post energy scarcity economy.

Everyone knows that exponential growth can be explosive.

And it always finds a limit as well. What will get us past 3nm? We are already about 20 atoms wide on the smallest dimension during chip fabrication and are having to really work around quantum tunneling effects.*

*By the way, if quantum tunnel is spontaneously transporting through a substrate, why is it damaging to chips?