AI Should Be Terrified of Humans

Brian Kateman

Time.com

Originally posted 24 July 23

Here are two excerpts:

Humans have a pretty awful track record for how we treat others, including other humans. All manner of exploitation, slavery, and violence litters human history. And today, billions upon billions of animals are tortured by us in all sorts of obscene ways, while we ignore the plight of others. There’s no quick answer to ending all this suffering. Let’s not wait until we’re in a similar situation with AI, where their exploitation is so entrenched in our society that we don’t know how to undo it. If we take for granted starting right now that maybe, just possibly, some forms of AI are or will be capable of suffering, we can work with the intention to build a world where they don’t have to.

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Today, many scientists and philosophers are looking at the rise of artificial intelligence from the other end—as a potential risk to humans or even humanity as a whole. Some are raising serious concerns over the encoding of social biases like racism and sexism into computer programs, wittingly or otherwise, which can end up having devastating effects on real human beings caught up in systems like healthcare or law enforcement. Others are thinking earnestly about the risks of a digital-being-uprising and what we need to do to make sure we’re not designing technology that will view humans as an adversary and potentially act against us in one way or another. But more and more thinkers are rightly speaking out about the possibility that future AI should be afraid of us.

“We rationalize unmitigated cruelty toward animals—caging, commodifying, mutilating, and killing them to suit our whims—on the basis of our purportedly superior intellect,” Marina Bolotnikova writes in a recent piece for Vox. “If sentience in AI could ever emerge…I’m doubtful we’d be willing to recognize it, for the same reason that we’ve denied its existence in animals.” Working in animal protection, I’m sadly aware of the various ways humans subjugate and exploit other species. Indeed, it’s not only our impressive reasoning skills, our use of complex language, or our ability to solve difficult problems and introspect that makes us human; it’s also our unparalleled ability to increase non-human suffering. Right now there’s no reason to believe that we aren’t on a path to doing the same thing to AI. Consider that despite our moral progress as a species, we torture more non-humans today than ever before. We do this not because we are sadists, but because even when we know individual animals feel pain, we derive too much profit and pleasure from their exploitation to stop.

The info is here.

Unemployment, Behavioral Health, And Suicide

R. Ramchand, L. Ayer, & S. O'Connor

Health Affairs

Originally posted 7 APR 22

Key Points:

• A large body of research, most of which is ecological, has investigated the relationship between job loss or unemployment rates and mental health, substance use, and suicide.

• Groups historically experiencing health disparities (for example, Black and Hispanic populations and those without a high school or college degree) have been differently affected by unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, preliminary evidence from three states suggests that suicide has disproportionately affected Americans who are members of racial and ethnic minority groups over the course of the pandemic.

• COVID-19 has affected the workforce in unique ways that differentiate the pandemic from previous economic downturns. However, previous research indicates that increases in suicide rates associated with economic downturns were driven by regional variation in unemployment, availability of unemployment benefits, and duration and magnitude of changes in unemployment.

• Policy mitigation strategies may have offset the potential impact of unemployment fluctuations on suicide rates during the pandemic. Policies include expanded unemployment benefits and food assistance, as well as tax credits and subsidies that reduced child care and health care costs.

• Research is needed to disentangle which populations experienced the most benefit when these strategies were present and which had the greatest risk when they were discontinued.

• Evidence-based strategies that expand the mental health workforce and integrate mental health supports into employment and training settings may be promising ways to help workers as they navigate persistent changes to workforce demands.

Suicide In The United States

A recent Health Affairs Health Policy Brief provides an overview of suicide in the United States. In 2019, 47,511 Americans intentionally ended their lives, making suicide the tenth leading cause of death. This is likely an underestimate—in 2019, 75,795 Americans died of poisonings, the majority of which were drug poisonings categorized as unintentional, although some were likely suicide overdoses that were misclassified.

Suicide is a growing national concern despite the fact that the national suicide rate decreased between 2018 and 2019 and again in 2020. This decrease comes after nearly twenty years of the national suicide rate increasing annually, and it was not observed in some minority racial and ethnic groups. In addition, although suicide rates decreased between 2018 and 2020, the drug overdose death rate increased.

The info is here.

The future of work: freedom, justice and capital in the age of artificial intelligence

F. S. de Sio, T. Almeida & J. van den Hoven

(2021) Critical Review of International Social

 and Political Philosophy

DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2021.2008204

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is predicted to have a deep impact on the future of work and employment. The paper outlines a normative framework to understand and protect human freedom and justice in this transition. The proposed framework is based on four main ideas: going beyond the idea of a Basic Income to compensate the losers in the transition towards AI-driven work, towards a Responsible Innovation approach, in which the development of AI technologies is governed by an inclusive and deliberate societal judgment; going beyond a philosophical conceptualisation of social justice only focused on the distribution of ‘primary goods’, towards one focused on the different goals, values, and virtues of various social practices (Walzer’s ‘spheres of justice’) and the different individual capabilities of persons (Sen’s ‘capabilities’); going beyond a classical understanding of capital, towards one explicitly including mental capacities as a source of value for AI-driven activities. In an effort to promote an interdisciplinary approach, the paper combines political and economic theories of freedom, justice and capital with recent approaches in applied ethics of technology, and starts applying its normative framework to some concrete example of AI-based systems: healthcare robotics, ‘citizen science’, social media and platform economy.

From the Conclusion

Whether or not it will create a net job loss (aka technological unemployment), Artificial Intelligence and digital technologies will change the nature of work, and will have a deep impact on people’s work lives. New political action is needed to govern this transition. In this paper we have claimed that also new philosophical concepts are needed, if the transition has to be governed responsibly and in the interest of everybody. The paper has outlined a general normative framework to make sense of- and address the issue of human freedom and justice in the age of AI at work. The framework is based on four ideas. First, in general freedom and justice cannot be achieved by only protecting existing jobs as a goal in itself, inviting persons to find ways for to remain relevant in a new machine-driven word, or offering financial compensation to those who are (permanently) left unemployed, for instance, via a Universal Basic Income. We should rather prevent technological unemployment and the worsening of working condition to happen, as a result of a Responsible Innovation approach to technology, where freedom and justice are built into the technical and institutional structures of the work of the future. Second, more in particular, we have argued, freedom and justice may be best promoted by a politics and an economics of technology informed by the recognition of different virtues and values as constitutive of different activities, following a Walzerian (‘spheres of justice’) approach to technological and institutional design, possibly integrated by a virtue ethics component. 

The article is here.

Women Carry An Undue Mental Health Burden. They Shouldn’t Have To

Rawan Hamadeh

Ms. Magazine

Originally posted 12 June 21

Here is an excerpt:

In developing countries, there is a huge gap in the availability and accessibility of specialized mental health services. Rather than visiting mental health specialists, women are more likely to seek mental health support in primary health care settings while accompanying their children or while attending consultations for other health issues. This leads to many mental health conditions going unidentified and therefore not treated. Often, women do not feel fully comfortable disclosing certain psychological and emotional distress because they fear stigmatization, confidentiality breaches or not being taken seriously.

COVID-19 has put the mental well-being of the entire world at risk. More adults are reporting struggles with mental health and substance use and are experiencing more symptoms of anxiety and depressive disorders. The stressors caused by the pandemic have affected the entire population; however, the effect on women and mothers specifically has been greater.

Women, the unsung heroes of the pandemic, face mounting pressures amid this global health crisis. Reports suggest that the long-term repercussions of COVID-19 could undo decades of progress for women and impose considerable additional burdens on them, threatening the difficult journey toward gender equality.

Unemployment, parenting responsibilities, homeschooling or caring for sick relatives are all additional burdens on women’s daily lives during the pandemic. It’s also important that we acknowledge the exponential need for mental health support for health care workers, and particularly health care mothers, who are juggling both their professional duties and their parenting responsibilities. They are the heroes on the front lines of the fight against the virus, and it’s crucial to prioritize their physical as well as their mental health.

The article is here.

Restoring the Economy Is the Last Thing We Should Want

Douglas Rushkoff
medium.com
Originally published 27 April 20

Everyone wants to know when we’re going to get the economy started up again, and just how many lives we’re willing to surrender before we do. We’ve all been made to understand the dilemma: The sooner we “open up” American and get back to our jobs, the more likely we spread Covid-19, further overwhelming hospitals and killing more people. Yet the longer we wait, the more people will suffer and die in other ways.

I think this is a false choice. Yes, it may be true that every 1% rise in unemployment leads to a corresponding 1% rise in suicides. And it’s true that an extended freeze of the economy could shorten the lifespan of 6.4 million Americans entering the job market by an average of about two years. But such metrics say less about the human cost of the downturn than they do about the dangerously absolute dependence of workers on traditional employment for basic sustenance — an artifact of an economy that has been intentionally rigged to favor big banks and passive shareholders over small and local businesses that actually provide goods and services in a sustainable way.

In reality, the sooner and more completely we restore the old economy, the faster we simply recreate the conditions that got us sick in the first place and rendered us incapable of mounting an effective response. The economy we’re committed to restoring is no more the victim of the Covid-19 crisis than it is the cause. We have to stop asking when will things get back to normal. They won’t. There is no going back. And that’s actually good news.

The info is here.

Ethics and automation: What to do when workers are displaced

Tracy Mayor
MIT School of Management
Originally published July 8, 2019

As companies embrace automation and artificial intelligence, some jobs will be created or enhanced, but many more are likely to go away. What obligation do organizations have to displaced workers in such situations? Is there an ethical way for business leaders to usher their workforces through digital disruption?

Researchers wrestled with those questions recently at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Next conference. Their conclusion: Company leaders need to better understand the negative repercussions of the technologies they adopt and commit to building systems that drive economic growth and social cohesion.

Pramod Khargonekar, vice chancellor for research at University of California, Irvine, and Meera Sampath, associate vice chancellor for research at the State University of New York, presented findings from their paper, “Socially Responsible Automation: A Framework for Shaping the Future.”

The research makes the case that “humans will and should remain critical and central to the workplace of the future, controlling, complementing and augmenting the strengths of technological solutions.” In this scenario, automation, artificial intelligence, and related technologies are tools that should be used to enrich human lives and livelihoods.

Aspirational, yes, but how do we get there?

The info is here.

The Rise of the Robots and the Crisis of Moral Patiency

John Danaher
Pre-publication version of AI and Society

Abstract

This paper adds another argument to the rising tide of panic about robots and AI. The argument is intended to have broad civilization-level significance, but to involve less fanciful speculation about the likely future intelligence of machines than is common among many AI-doomsayers. The argument claims that the rise of the robots will create a crisis of moral patiency. That is to say, it will reduce the ability and willingness of humans to act in the world as responsible moral agents, and thereby reduce them to moral patients. Since that ability and willingness is central to the value system in modern liberal democratic states, the crisis of moral patiency has a broad civilization-level significance: it threatens something that is foundational to and presupposed in much contemporary moral and political discourse. I defend this argument in three parts. I start with a brief analysis of an analogous argument made (or implied) in pop culture. Though those arguments turn out to be hyperbolic and satirical, they do prove instructive as they illustrates a way in which the rise of robots could impact upon civilization, even when the robots themselves are neither malicious nor powerful enough to bring about our doom. I then introduce the argument from the crisis of moral patiency, defend its main premises and address objections.

The paper is here.

Modelling suicide and unemployment: a longitudinal analysis

Modelling suicide and unemployment: a longitudinal analysis covering 63 countries, 2000–11
Nordt, Carlos et al.
The Lancet Psychiatry
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)00118-7

Summary

Background

As with previous economic downturns, there has been debate about an association between the 2008 economic crisis, rising unemployment, and suicide. Unemployment directly affects individuals' health and, unsurprisingly, studies have proposed an association between unemployment and suicide. However, a statistical model examining the relationship between unemployment and suicide by considering specific time trends among age-sex-country subgroups over wider world regions is still lacking. We aimed to enhance knowledge of the specific effect of unemployment on suicide by analysing global public data classified according to world regions.

Methods

We retrospectively analysed public data for suicide, population, and economy from the WHO mortality database and the International Monetary Fund's world economic outlook database from 2000 to 2011. We selected 63 countries based on sample size and completeness of the respective data and extracted the information about four age groups and sex. To check stability of findings, we conducted an overall random coefficient model including all study countries and four additional models, each covering a different world region.

Findings

Despite differences in the four world regions, the overall model, adjusted for the unemployment rate, showed that the annual relative risk of suicide decreased by 1·1% (95% CI 0·8–1·4) per year between 2000 and 2011. The best and most stable final model indicated that a higher suicide rate preceded a rise in unemployment (lagged by 6 months) and that the effect was non-linear with higher effects for lower baseline unemployment rates. In all world regions, the relative risk of suicide associated with unemployment was elevated by about 20–30% during the study period. Overall, 41 148 (95% CI 39 552–42 744) suicides were associated with unemployment in 2007 and 46 131 (44 292–47 970) in 2009, indicating 4983 excess suicides since the economic crisis in 2008.

Interpretation

Suicides associated with unemployment totalled a nine-fold higher number of deaths than excess suicides attributed to the most recent economic crisis. Prevention strategies focused on the unemployed and on employment and its conditions are necessary not only in difficult times but also in times of stable economy.

Ethics of Admission, Pt. II: Undergraduates and the Brass Ring

By Jane Robbins
Inside Higher Ed
Originally posted February 26, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

But what about students? Is it worth the chance at the brass ring? One could say there is no choice but get on the merry-go-round—and that is certainly what they are being told. But if we know that many will not get a shot because of where they are placed or when they got on or whether, metaphorically, they lack the height compared to the one behind them to reach the ring, is the current approach wrong—in both the incorrect and immoral senses of the word?

The inevitable is, of course, happening: people are beginning to question the value of a college degree for them as individuals. This is why, counterintutively, the push for the current wage data approach to value is completely wrong-headed and also, I think unethical. It is the individual that has been lost in the wholesale approach to commodity credentials and wage comparison, a particularly perverse kind of educational “channeling.” In the service of whose interests is, for example, the tireless emphasis on STEM and the disparagement of arts? Who will care when large percentages with STEM credentials can’t find jobs, experience depressed wages because there are so many of them, and find themselves with no transferable skills or habits of mind when technology moves on? If it is going to be difficult to find a job anyway, one should at least have followed one’s own interests. Education should allow you to choose your work, not vice versa.

On the constant merry-go-round, we seem to have forgotten that college, or any other education at any level except technical and some forms of professional education, is not to get a job, and certainly not to get a particular job. That is what trade school is for. We should be encouraging students who want a particular job -- a vocation -- to train elsewhere, perhaps with the idea of getting more and broader education at a later time.

The rest of the blog post is here.

Move Over Economists: We Need a Council of Psychological Advisers

Much of governing involves predicting behavior or getting people to change it. Lawyers and economists need some help with both.

By Barry Schwartz
The Atlantic
Originally published

Though President Obama won reelection decisively, he won't have much time to celebrate. Many of the nation's problems -- stimulating employment, reducing the deficit, controlling health-care costs, and improving the quality of education -- are very serious, and some of them must be addressed with great urgency. And none of these problems can be addressed simply by waving a magic government wand. To a significant degree, they all involve understanding what motivates current practices -- of business-people, financiers, doctors, patients, teachers, students -- and what levers we may be able to use to change those practices.

Historically, when the need has arisen to change behavior, political leaders have turned to economists. That's one reason why presidents have a Council of Economic Advisers. When economists speak, presidents listen. And when economists have the president's ear, all their whispers are predicated on a set of assumptions about human behavior. Whether it's increasing GDP, reducing unemployment, sustaining Social Security, making sure people are financially prepared for retirement, or stabilizing the financial sector, economists commonly hold certain beliefs. They will for example argue that people are motivated by self-interest and are rational calculators of their interests, and that the most effective way to get people to change the way they behave is by creating the right material incentives.

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There is also growing evidence, some of it provided by psychologists Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth, that the focus on beefing up the cognitive components of education that has dominated reform for the last 30 years may be misplaced. More important may be efforts to cultivate motivation and character (Paul Tough's remarkable new book, How Children Succeed, provides a vivid summary of this work). The importance of character and motivation suggests that the drill-and-test model of education that has become so common may actually be not just ineffective, but counterproductive.

The entire story is here.