Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: arm@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Alexander d Macalalad) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Who will teach morals to computers? Message-ID: Date: 23 Oct 90 08:12:12 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University Lines: 62 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article mgobbi@cs.ubc.ca (Mike Gobbi) writes: >No matter how sophisticated programs and computers get, they will never be >conscious as we understand the term (I am a computer science student and have >studied this question in on of my courses, so I am pretty confident in my >statement). The programs will no more have "morality" than does an animal >trap. Hm. I'm not sure how confident I am in your statement. First, I'm not convinced that computer science is the most appropriate area to study consciousness. Second, I'm not sure if anyone understands the term, let alone that there is some general consensus about it. Third, I'm not quite sure if consciousness or the lack thereof has anything to do with the morality of computer programs. > I suspect that the decisions these computers make will be EXACTLY the same >decisions that humans in the same situation would make (only faster). Thus, >if you want to enforce morality, you have to ensure that the laws are moral. > > Coincidentally enough, this is already being done. The abortion issue and >euthenasia issue are two medical problems that spring to mind. How can we >complain that a computer has issues an immoral judgement when we allow a >person to issue the same judgement now? On the legal side there are many >questions relating to homeless, jobless, and opressed situations. Just as in >the medical profession, there is no consensus here on what is correct. I think here we are closer to teasing out some of the issues associated with decision making systems (which may or may not be conscious). (I shift from intelligent systems to decision making systems because ethics comes into play in decision making, and not intelligence per se.) What is a moral decision and an immoral one? Is morality simple enough that we can encode it, legislate it, prescribe it? More and more decision making systems are being introduced, usually in the medical domain, although these systems usually are careful in leaving the final decision in the hands of the physician. It is instructive to look at the ethics and value systems encoded into these systems. At the heart of these systems is an essentially utilitarian ethics, where the system strives to maximize X, where X could be "quality of life", "happiness", etc. The values of the decision maker are measured in terms of X to get a utility function which can then be plugged into to arrive at the appropriate decision. Although better than a purely algorithmic approach, because it tries to take into account the values of the decision maker, this utilitarian approach leaves much to be desired, at least from my point of view. For one thing, I can't help but feel that something is lost in the translation from values to utility function. Plus, the choice of X itself is something of a value judgment in itself. > I think worrying about what computers MIGHT do is far less important than >worrying about what society IS doing right now. Hopefully, though, we can learn something about morality through decision making systems, just as we are learning something about intelligence from intelligent systems. >-- > __ > /..\ In quest of knowledge.... > --mm--mm-- Mike Gobbi Alex Macalalad