Today I was listening to a talk by Yuval Noah Harari, a self described philosopher/historian. He brought up a couple of interesting points that are important to talk about, but seem to be completely out of the public’s interest. AI (artificial Intelligence) and how technology is driving important changes to the political and economic structure of the world.
AI is something that has been on my mind lately. Personally, I have been concerned about algorithms and how they are widely used without most creators understanding the computer’s decision making process. Called black boxes, these programs are written by programmers and evolve quickly as the computer gathers more information from other sources. An important point is that the programmers writing the original parameters typically are not experts in the areas in which they create the programs. As an example, the prison system is using criminal justice algorithms for determining parole eligibility. Some of the items a programmer might consider important in decision making in this area are statistics on who commits crimes, demographics of crime and types of crimes. These are important statistics, but how they are used can create a system of bias in both gender and race. Statistics fail to show historical race bias in the criminal justice system and therefore tend to continue bias because numbers are devoid of the human element that created them in the first place. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has a good article detailing background and cases on this subject.
My concern is that these algorithms are considered proprietary and therefore the public is in the dark about what specific information is used in the calculations. Especially alarming is the fact these black boxes are used in government programs without the public knowing what information is used to make important decisions that have a bearing on their lives. Seems to me that corporations are subverting the whole democratic process by owning the technology and not giving the participants a say in what the game rules are.
Harari talked about how AI is now being used to make philosophical questions, questions of right and wrong. One example is the driverless car and how it would determine what to do in emergency situations. What of the scenario of a choice between killing the driver or a small child in the road? Something to consider is that corporations are making these decisions, not society. A company might include a code to insure the safety of the driver and their well being along with a code about how to handle emergency situations. Perhaps, these lines of code may conflict and not make the choice a human would.
The bottom line is do we want corporations determining philosophical questions of what is right and wrong. To my way of thinking, they have shown a marked disregard for the public good opting instead for the profit motive and investor dividends.
Talks by Yuval Noah Harari:
Myths We Need To Survive
Humanity’s Divine Potential and an AI Arms Race
The Future of Humanity
Books by Harari:
Sapiens
Homo Deus
21 Lessons for the 21st Century