How to gain control and influence algorithms: Contesting AI to find relevant reasons
Abstract:
Relevancy is a prevalent term in value alignment. We either need to keep track of the relevant moral reasons, we need to embed the relevant values, or we need to learn from the relevant behaviour. What relevancy entails in particular cases, however, is often ill-defined. The reasons for this are obvious, it is hard to define relevancy in a way that is both general and concrete enough to give direction towards a specific implementation. In this paper, we describe the inherent difficulty that comes along with defining what is relevant to a particular situation. Simply due to design and the way an AI system functions, we need to state or learn particular goals and circumstances under which that goal is completed. However, because of both the changing nature of the world and the varied wielders and users of such implements, misalignment occurs, especially after a longer amount of time. We propose a way to counteract this by putting contestability front and centre throughout the lifecycle of an AI system, as it can provide insight into what is actually relevant at a particular instance. This allows designers to update the applications in such a manner that they can account for oversight during design.
Normative Uncertainty and Societal Preferences: Problems with evaluative standards
Abstract:
Many technological systems these days interact with their environment with increasingly little human intervention. This situation comes with higher stakes and consequences that society needs to manage. No longer are we dealing with 404 pages: AI systems today may cause serious harm. To address this, we wish to exert a kind of control over these systems, so that they can adhere to our moral beliefs. However, given the plurality of values in our societies, which “oughts” ought these machines to adhere to? In this article, we examine Borda voting as a way to maximize expected choice-worthiness among individuals through different possible “implementations” of ethical principles. We use data from the Moral Machine experiment to illustrate the effectiveness of such a voting system. Although it appears to be effective on average, the maximization of expected choice-worthiness is heavily dependent on the formulation of principles. While Borda voting may be a good way of ensuring outcomes that are preferable to many, the larger problems in maximizing expected choice-worthiness, such as the capacity to formulate credences well, remain notoriously difficult; hence, we argue that such mechanisms should be implemented with caution and that other problems ought to be solved first.