{"id":45074,"date":"2023-03-17T15:56:15","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T16:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/?p=45074"},"modified":"2023-03-17T17:38:02","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T17:38:02","slug":"are-we-walking-into-an-ai-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peymantaeidi.net\/stem-cell\/2023\/03\/17\/are-we-walking-into-an-ai-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we walking into an AI tragedy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Pope Francis insists that science should be at the service of humanity, ethical concerns seem to be an afterthought in the race to capture the AI market<\/h2>\n
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This Lent, please consider making a donation to Aleteia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Silicon Valley moves forward by following three rather straightforward steps: try things, see how they fail, try again.<\/strong> In more ways than one, it is but another example of the typical modern scientific-empirical method. And whereas this way of doing things \u201chas brought us some incredibly cool consumer technology and fun websites\u201d \u2013 as Kelsey Piper<\/a> rightly puts it \u2013 AI is an entirely different game: It is no longer about coolness or fun, but about \u201crobust engineering for reliability.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a recently published interview with Time<\/a>, DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis<\/a> urged caution. DeepMind is a subsidiary of Google\u2019s parent company, Alphabet, and one of the world\u2019s leading artificial intelligence labs. One of its algorithms, AlphaFold, \u201chad predicted the 3D structures of nearly all the proteins known to humanity, and [\u2026] the company was [is] making the technology behind it freely available,\u201d the interview reads<\/a>. Even more, \u201cAlphaFold has already been a force multiplier for hundreds of thousands of scientists working on efforts such as developing malaria vaccines, fighting antibiotic resistance, and tackling plastic pollution<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But with great power also comes great danger. In the same interview<\/a>, Hassabis explained that \u201cin recent months, researchers building an AI system to design new drugs revealed that their tool could be easily repurposed to make deadly new chemicals<\/strong>.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI would advocate,\u201d Hassabis told Time<\/a>, \u201cnot moving fast and breaking things<\/em>.\u201d Hassabis was referring to an old Facebook<\/a> motto that became the classic M.O. of the company, encouraging engineers to focus on releasing new technological developments as soon as they were ready to be launched, and worry about solving the problems they might cause later<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This appetite for disruption certainly helped Facebook to reach 3 billion users, but \u201cit also left the company entirely unprepared when disinformation, hate speech, and even incitement to genocide began appearing on its platform<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main problem, Piper explains<\/a>, is that tech \u201cis often a winner-takes-all sector.\u201d Even if there are plenty of different search engines, Google alone controls more than 90% of its market. But companies like Microsoft and Baidu now have \u201ca once-in-a-lifetime shot at displacing Google and becoming the internet search giant with AI-enabled, friendlier interface<\/a>.\u201d And whereas there is nothing inherently wrong with this sort of competition, it is self-evident that \u201cwhen it comes to very powerful technologies \u2014 and obviously AI is going to be one of the most powerful ever \u2014 we need to be careful,\u201d Hassabis insists<\/a>. \u201cNot everybody is thinking about those things [i.e., ethical concerns]. It\u2019s like experimentalists, many of whom don\u2019t realize they\u2019re holding dangerous material<\/strong>.\u201d Competition can certainly be great, but it can also be threatening. As some analysts have warned, \u201cwe could stumble into an AI catastrophe<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Maintaining the standards of science<\/h3>\n

This is one of the Max Planck Society\u2019s main concerns. The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science<\/a> is a formally independent, non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed the Max Planck Society in 1948 in honor of its former president, theoretical physicist Max Planck. <\/p>\n

This past February, a delegation from the society was received by Pope Francis for a private audience in the Vatican<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In his address to the Society, Sophie Peeters\u2019 note explains<\/a>, \u201cPope Francis highlighted the esteem of the Holy See for scientific research and, more specifically, for the work of the Max Planck Society in their commitment to the advancement of sciences and progress in their specific areas of research.\u201d <\/p>\n

But, perhaps more importantly, the Pontiff also encouraged the Society to maintain standards of \u201cpure science\u201d \u2013 that is, scientific research that is not driven by either political prejudices or by sheer economic interest.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, the perils science faces today, according to Pope Francis, are not just political or economic: the Pontiff has repeatedly insisted that priority has been given to sheer \u201ctechnical\u201d concerns, leaving no room for ethical reflection associated to technological research or scientific developments. When functionality is given precedence over what is ethically licit, caring for others (which, the Pope recalls, is the priority of any human activity) is no longer on the horizon.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"SCIENCE\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

AI: enormous development, and an equally enormous tragedy<\/h3>\n

In concluding its general assembly on emerging technologies last February, the Pontifical Academy for Life expressed concern about technological innovations that could \u201cdestroy everything.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

During a press conference, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Academy, called for an \u201cinternational table\u201d to regulate these new technologies.<\/p>\n

These new \u201cconvergent technologies\u201d (nanotechnology, biotechnology, computer science, and cognitive science) Paglia warned, can bring \u201cenormous development\u201d but also \u201can equally enormous tragedy,\u201d comparing them to nuclear power and stressing the perils of having algorithms deciding human affairs: \u201cTechnology without ethics is a very dangerous thing [\u2026] we need to refer to moral values and principles in order to have criteria for evaluation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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