Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings with it several technological advances that are meant to improve our lives. However, it also brings ethical and moral dilemmas that do not necessarily have a straightforward answer. One common scenario is based on the trolley problem, a thought experiment in which one must choose the lesser of two evils. A runaway train is on a collision course and will kill five people. But there is a lever where you are standing that allows you to change the track of the train which will result in the death of only one person. Do you do nothing and kill five people or pull the lever and kill one person? What is the right thing to do?
In AI, we use this thought experiment as a framework for the Moral Machine (moralmachine.net) to understand how an AI is expected to behave in the society that it is in. The train is replaced by a self-driving car. What is present in each track/lane changes, experimenting with as many variations as possible. Scenarios include choosing between five men versus five women, one cat versus one dog, three elderly people versus one child, three criminals versus one law-abiding citizen and the list continues.
The self-driving car scenario is slightly different from the train in various aspects. In the train scenario, you are directly contributing to the outcome by pressing the lever. While in the self-driving car scenario, you are passing judgement on what the car should choose.
These types of moral dilemmas are not new. However, their extension to the field of AI allows us to think about what type of actions it should take if there will be fatal consequences. Yet, we cannot simply stop here. The AI does not exist in isolation. It has been created by someone/company and it was trained on some set of data. The decisions it makes are highly influenced by these two factors, and yet there is no real framework to consider the responsibility of the software engineer/s and the company that releases such AI.
As AI becomes more pervasive in our daily lives, it is more important for society to understand how AI works and how it impacts people’s daily lives. More companies and government institutions are relying on the mostly accurate decision-making systems that AI brings to the table. Understanding its impact is crucial to ensure that such systems are fair and that there is a process for accountability when things go wrong.
Claudia Borg is a senior lecturer with the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta and the coordinator of LT-Bridge (www.lt-bridge.eu), an H2020-funded Twinning project in the field of Language Technologies and Artificial Intelligence.
Sound Bites
• Researchers have discovered a unique class of medications that can be used to treat patients with a variety of coronary issues, including heart attacks. Ticks are used as a model for developing these drugs that prevent blood clotting, as they have naturally occurring blood clot inhibitors. Their saliva contains pharmacological and immunological active compounds, creating an immune response in the body and acting as blood thinners.
• A new study of brain scans of boys and girls with autism found significant differences in brain centres, suggesting that gender-specific diagnostics are needed. Historically, research was biased toward male patients, with a diagnosis being four times more common in boys than girls. These differences might explain why girls with autism have fewer overt repetitive behaviours than boys. It will help girls with autism get diagnosed earlier since treatments work best during the preschool years when the brain’s motor and language centres are developing.
For more soundbites, listen to Radio Mocha www.fb.com/RadioMochaMalta/.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Babies have around 100 more bones than adults at birth. The extra flexibility helps them pass through the birth canal and allows for rapid growth. With age, the bones fuse, leaving 206 bones.
• Rats have the ability to “laugh” when tickled. A researcher showed that they can even chase someone’s hand in a playful manner within the right conditions.
• Men are more likely to be colour-blind than women. The gene responsible for this condition is found on the X chromosome. Even if women have the genes on one of their two X chromosomes, a properly functioning gene on the other one makes up for that loss. If men inherit the gene on their only X chromosome, they will be colour-blind.
• The longest breath held underwater is 24.03 minutes, a record set in 2016 by professional freediver Alexis Segura Vendrell.
For more trivia, see: www.um.edu.mt/think.