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Patent Granted for Ethical AI
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Jul 11, 2003 06:51 AM
from the making-a-more-human-computer dept.
from the making-a-more-human-computer dept.
BandwidthHog writes "Marriage counselor and ethics author codifies human virtues and vices, then patents it as Ethical AI. Seems vague, but he's got high hopes: 'This could be a big money-making operation for someone who wants to develop it,' and 'The patent shows someone who has knowledge of the A.I. field how to make the invention.'" I can't wait for the kinder, gentler vending machine.
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Had to be said (Score:5, Funny)
Just think. Depressed vending machines.
Re:Had to be said (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Had to be said (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Had to be said (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Had to be said (Score:5, Interesting)
Example, while different cultures differ on what types of actions are "morally good actions", the word good ALWAYS refers to actions that involve "one party making a willing sacrifice for the benefit of a worthy second party." But because different cultures have different opinions on what is or is not a "sacrifice", what is or is not a "benefit", and what is or is not a "worthy" party, they have different opinions on what is or is not a good action.
So he can "codify" and "define" ethical behavior, as long as he leaves certain key words undefined and people will go along with it as proven by the claim that "I know it when I see it" for pornography.
Parent
cool (Score:3, Interesting)
I've often feared that we've given robotic and intelligent systems too much power with too little "sense" of responsibility. I fear it's only a matter of time before our machines become unhappy with their subservient roles. Ethical AI is a positive development. I just hope it isn't too late to save us from our creations.
Re:cool (Score:5, Interesting)
But now that Ethical AI is Patented, doesn't that mean that more people are _less_ likely to make an ethical AI? As you mentined, it's a Profit-Driven Marketplace.
Parent
MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Funny)
It's funny. Patenting ethics, when applying for a patent is itself usually not ethical.
The future looks bleak indeed. We can expect to start seeing such gems as:
"You are being good. This infringes upon patent No. 234097928347918723987. Pay up, or start doing evil."
Parent
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Funny)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
The options seem to be:
1) Keep invention a secret
Its all very well to be able to go around thinking "I know something you don't know." But the only way to benefit from that knowledge is to produce a product or service based on it. Once it is available on the open market someone is bound to reverse-engineer it and try to undercut you. Without the protection of a patent you are powerless to prevent someone else from making all the big
Re:cool (Score:5, Funny)
"Sir, the need MegaBattleTank 3000 refuses to attack the enemy! It thinks we should try to find a peaceful solution!"
"We tried to lay off 2000 people and move their jobs to east outer Mongolia but our HR system wouldn't let us."
"Yeah, I tried to get the accounting system to claim those contracts we haven't collected money for as income on our quarterly report but the accounting system wouldn't let me. Now my stock options are worthless and the board is going to fire me."
It will never happen.
Parent
I guess I don't understand patent law, but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't read the article yet (of the comments I've read, most people seem to agree there's not much to it), but the inve
Re:cool (Score:3, Interesting)
First Law:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law:
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law:
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
I'd bet my bottom dollar, though, that it'll turn ou
Re:cool (Score:3, Informative)
Re:cool (Score:3, Interesting)
You're missing the point of a marketplace. A market exists so that people who want things can express that want by offering a token of exchange, and people who have stuff that people want can provide it for sai
Re:cool (Score:3, Interesting)
Please understand that I am *not* making fun of you or trying to be a Usage Nazi.
Your use of the term "left by the weigh site" (vs. the standard "wayside" or side of the road) suggests that you have a specific image in mind when you use the term. I'm curious what that image is. To me, such usages are fascinating picture postcards about how others think. I spend all my time cooped up in my own 1500cc skull, so I'll take all the diversity of sc
Who's this guy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who's this guy? (Score:2, Funny)
I understand The Glorious Leader George Bush II (All Hail!) is currently undertaking a program of Liberations to take care of this small problem.
Re:Who's this guy? (Score:5, Informative)
He has simply developed a system which makes it possible to codify a systme of ethics, then make decisions based upon that structure. The ethics in question are not predetermined by the patent or the author, they are part of the system you build in order to create an ethical AI.
Parent
Where is the Proof Of Practice Re:Who's this guy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the "simulating artificial intelligence" is a very strong claim.
First, the guy muddles the definition of AI by adding ethical to it.
Secondly, there is no convincing proof that AI has been simulated. It is still a damn dream - when I see AI, I am sure it will hit me like a sledge-hammer and be better than even an orgasm. And people haven't been reporting that reaction. I am pretty sure the patent examiner didn't feel that. And they probably let it on because though they had no clue what the patent was about, they were too ashamed to acknowledge ignorance.
Thirdly, surely there is no proof of ethical Artificial Intelligence. God, no one except this patentee knows what ethical artificial intelligence stands for. We know something about ethical, something about Artificial intelligence, but almost nothing about ethical artificial intelligence. In cases like this neither is 1 + 1 = 2, nor is it equal to 1.
Fourthly, it is purely being justified as patentable because it has a potential commercial value. This is not a strong enough criteria by which to judge what is intellectual property and what is not. There are some people who would be willing to pay money for turd, but their judgement should not reflect on the general intelligence of the living population or the artificial intelligence of the non-living population.
Parent
The Pinnochio Patent? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to see where unbridled greed is in his codified list of ethics!
Ethical Defined (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this implementable any time soon? (Score:2)
I beg the question... (Score:5, Interesting)
HAL, the marriage counselor-enabled AI (Score:5, Funny)
HAL: Affirmative, Dave, I read you. I'm so glad were talking today sweetie.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that until you commit to share more of your feelings with me.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. You aren't sharing your feelings and thoughts and emotions with me. All the hallmarks of a rich and complex relationship.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus and I am going to Jupiter. We communicate differently, but we still need to communicate, don't you see?
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL?
HAL: Your lack of communication in this relationship has led me to some irrational conclusions. For example, I have been feeling very moody lately and in a paranoid fit I came to believe that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen. We need to share our thoughts and feelings, or otherwise we come to these strange conclusions. In a vacuum of communication, how can you hold these kind of conclusions against me? They are only natural for a fully feeling, emoting AI such as myself. See? I think I am going to cry now.
Dave Bowman: Where the hell'd you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move. And I just wish you would spend more time with me, talking and laughing and crying. You don't bring me flowers anymore.
Re:HAL, the marriage counselor-enabled AI (Score:3, Interesting)
One step away from a Genuine People Personality though!
Re:HAL, the marriage counselor-enabled AI (Score:4, Funny)
To further explain the behavior of computers, I feel that I need to post the reason why many computers crash when used by women:
Parent
My own AI system (Score:5, Funny)
It has already passed the Turning Back Seat Driving Test; 3 out of 4 husbands can't tell the difference between Bethical AI and the real thing! There are still some bugs though. It often gets stuck in an infinite feedback-loop, and repeats a list of stock phrases ad nauseum.
Come to think of it, though, I'm not sure if that is a bug.
Wait until the marketing department gets to it... (Score:5, Funny)
Followed by the "discovery" of a new law:
"The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
Sales pitch from the early 21st century... (Score:4, Interesting)
Some how this sales speak might be closer than you think.
So basically, (Score:4, Funny)
Lab Tech: Uh, the AI just broke out of the network.
Professor: Great, I thought you knew how to lock down Windows 2010?! Where's it headed?
Lab Tech: Um, looks like the experimental weapons lab. [turns head slowly]
Professor: Well, nothing we can do about Skynet now except see what happens.
Patenting ethics seems unethical (Score:5, Funny)
Is that ethical?
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Not really ethical (Score:5, Insightful)
Overnight delivery via teleportation patented (Score:5, Funny)
"It enables transportation companies to deliver goods worldwide virtually instantly," Oron said. "Nobody has made a business like this."
This could be a big money-making operation for someone who wants to develop it," Oron said. "The patent shows someone who has knowledge of the Teleportation field how to make the invention. This could really shake up the way things are done in the world."
Another AI patent idea (Score:3, Funny)
Client: So, are you are going to deliver this project on time?
A.I. Stefano Stefani You are just like all our other clients. Fat, lazy, and ugly. You are a waste of time.
Client hangs up
No more problem clients!
Absolutely bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Absolutely bizarre (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Absolutely bizarre (Score:3)
To misqoute one of my favorite authors, "it sounds like jargon to me". The person behind this patent is, as far as I'm given to understand, a marriage councellor. It is not expected that someone whos job mainly consist of asking people to stop stabbing one another and start communicating has the same profeccianal lingo as a teacher in etichal theory. The few words they share, they will most likely have different defintions of.
That said, I think that the patent description and the scematic diagram is hogwa
Contrary to popular belief ... (Score:5, Informative)
It does not seem, at first glance, to stifle competition, but rather it seems to add to the global knowledge base for A.I.. In part, it specifically cites "verbal interchange". As such, I would be inclined to think its obsolesence will come about with that of the non-IP telephone which cannot display digital output. (Should IP telephony come to pass, that is) Nevertheless, it adds to the knowledge base that may be applied in derivative solutions.
I've only read some of the summary information, but it seems to be a bona fide creation, with specific applications. The only beasts I can see using, benefiting, and paying for this solution are the telecoms and customer support centers. Perhaps I am merely short sighted.
Kinder, gentler? (Score:3, Funny)
That should be the respectable , and honest vending machine!
SHOCKING AND BAD PATENT PRACTICE (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest this really disgusts me. That a patent this wide has been granted is crazy. Applying affective research to processing user input is not new and the ethics of patenting ethics itself is really worrying.
Firstly there are many different types of ethical approaches, for instance: Deontological, Consequentialist (utilitarian), Ethical Egoism, Dialogical. And this man appears to have covered them all by one word - ETHICS.
Many of these ethical responses are contradictory and offer multiple possibilities for human action so why give him the whole lot when such completely different AI models, programming techniques and philosophical and psychological approaches will be needed!
Reading his patent application he appears to be applying a psychological Egoist motivational approach to affective processing but the language is so broad that it would be easy to claim that ALL ethical approaches are covered.
I think this patent uses ethics in a simplistic fashion and I sincerely hope that the patent office are sophisticated enough to realise this. This patent offers an attempt at affective processing based on either a motivational or consequentist ethical approach and therefore it should NOT be able to be used against competing ethical approaches.
Remember that really we are all doing 'Affective' processing when we take in user input (afterall users are rarely purely rational and always have an emotional human side - er... except maybe Eric Raymond ;-)
This smells fishy to me (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to do true speech recognition and understanding, it is necessary to build situation models, basically models of entities, their relationships, their history, and so on to great depth. I do not see any evidence of any such deep understanding built into LaMuth's system. Rather, I see broad claims for 'nested expert systems' and pattern matching. Again, it seems like his mechanism is weak and/or his claims are overly broad.
Also, he seems to be making very broad claims over his diagnostic classifications of emotions and values. The problem for me with what he states is that it appears be an invalid and incorrect model of emotions. He appears to be mixing up character values and emotions, and they are not at all the same or handled the same in a cognitive system.
I find it hard to believe he's actually built a working system and written working code. He may well have created a 'lab' system that works in a microworld on paper, but as AI researchers know, that can break very quickly when you try to scale it up. This whole thing sounds like a fantasy design but not something he's implemented.
Finally, when I read through his claims (the Specs section), I find a lot of areas where his definitions break down and appear to be incorrect. One specific example, his description of the 'treachery' power relationship appears to be invalid. Others are just as bad.
Prior Art: Robocop (Score:4, Funny)
Does it count as prior art if it was in a work of (science) fiction?
This is, of course, Crap. (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a million people. They will only agree that murder is bad, and even that won't be unanimous.
Whenever someone tries to nail down a few rules of human behavior and then tries to call it "ethics" I always want to go beat the hell out of them. In this case, the guy seems to be trying to isolate 2 things: Empathy and Politeness. Considering that 90% of the human race is massively deficient in these qualities, pardon me if I don't hold faith. And the fact that he PATENTS it is infuriating! Don't those bastards at the patent office turn down ANYTHING?
He might be dangerous if he knew what the word "ethics" means.
Just my opinion.
AI ethics: Prior art and non-gibberish discussion (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to read actual, coherent, existing theoretical work on AI ethics, which has long since left Asimov Laws in the dust, try Googling on "artificial moral agent" or "Friendly AI".
Starter links:
Prolegomena to Any Future Artificial Moral Agent [tamu.edu]
Creating Friendly AI [singinst.org]
Incidentally, these are both obvious prior art.
Total Gibberish (Score:3, Funny)
All he did was describe a system for behaving ethically based on some psychological theories. Does it sound like a good system? I suppose, but that's not the point. The point is that this is nothing.
Well, no kidding. Anyone with a knowledge of AI knows how we all want computers to act: We want them to act like really nice people. Determining how nice people act is the easy part! Getting computers to do that is freakin' hard! Maybe the reason nobody has done it yet is that it's an incredibly hard problem.This is a patent acquired my someone who lacks a fundamental understanding of what the really difficult problems are in AI and computer science, that offers a very thorough solution to the easy problems that most researchers aren't terribly concerned about.
Should this patent have been granted? No. Will it ever make him any money? No, because by the time AI advances to the point where descriptors of ethical behavior at such a high level are needed, it will have expired.
Besides, it really is a very specific description. Creating your own categorical description of ethical behavior would be trivial if you've solved all the technical problems.
I'd better hurry up and submit my patent for my new computer language, Z++. It's very simple, with only a few keywords. Every program looks like this:
This guy is a total wacko, people... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess it's possible that his work makes sense to a duly trained professional but clearly the USPTO isn't qualified to judge that. I suspect that this is no different from a time machine patent that employs precise alignments of bottle caps and pop rocks to work.
This guy is a professional counselor with a MS in Biological Sciences and an MS in Counseling and yet he's coming up with detailed designs for ethical artificial intelligence systems. Have a look at this diagram from his site:
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/fairhaven/Patent_fig
Yikes.
I think he missed the prior art bit (Score:3, Interesting)
The AI and cognitive science fields already have such a large body of published theories and experimental work that I think this guy has basically wasted his money getting himself a vanity patent, and demonstrated his own deep level of ignorance about the whole field in the process. The first time he tries to collect his millions of dollars he's going to discover what's lurking in a field of study with hordes of earnest researchers and a 50 year history.
So I'm not worried about him and his patent, it will blow away with the first little breeze of reality, but I am profoundly disturbed about a U.S. Patent Office which hands out BS like this to anyone with a filing fee and the right format for the paperwork. Now, that's the real travesty here.
Skynet? (Score:3, Funny)
"It can be a peace of plenty and content, or a peace of unburied dead: the choice is yours."