I feel that in general people obsess over assigning blame to the detriment of actually correcting the situation.
Take the example of punishing crimes. If we don’t punish theft, we’ll get more theft right? But what do you do when you have harsh penalties for crime, but crime keeps happening? Do you accept crime as immutable, or actually begin to address root causes to try to reduce crime systemically?
Punishment is only one tool in a toolbox for correcting bad behavior. I am dismayed that people are fearful enough of the loss of this single tool as to want to architect our entire society around making sure it is available.
With AI we have a chance to chart a different course. If a machine makes a mistake, the priority can and should be fixing the error in that machine so the same mistake can never happen again. In this way, fixing an AI can be more reliable than trying to punish human beings ever could.
I'm always hesitant to enter "punishing crimes" discussions on this one. Those, by definition, establish intent to commit the crime in a majority of cases. As such, they would almost certainly hit some "accountability" even if they were in a company. Heck, even qualified immunity for government actors typically falls on that.
That said, I do think we are in alignment here. Punitive actions are but a tool. I don't think it should be tossed out. But I also suspect it is one of the lesser effective tools we have.
I feel that in general people obsess over assigning blame to the detriment of actually correcting the situation.
Take the example of punishing crimes. If we don’t punish theft, we’ll get more theft right? But what do you do when you have harsh penalties for crime, but crime keeps happening? Do you accept crime as immutable, or actually begin to address root causes to try to reduce crime systemically?
Punishment is only one tool in a toolbox for correcting bad behavior. I am dismayed that people are fearful enough of the loss of this single tool as to want to architect our entire society around making sure it is available.
With AI we have a chance to chart a different course. If a machine makes a mistake, the priority can and should be fixing the error in that machine so the same mistake can never happen again. In this way, fixing an AI can be more reliable than trying to punish human beings ever could.