Week 15 - Ethics

 Ethics

Act Utilitarianism

    Act utilitarianism is the single most beneficial theory in the world, period. It narrates that the 'right' course of action in any situation is one that would grant the most overall positive net gain to every party involved (or the least negative gain). This means that in every case, following the theory would provide the most good - being, on a surface level, the clear cut winner. However, it skips out the individual part - as long as one person's individual suffering would pay for a multitude of other people being happier, then it is all good in the eyes of this theory. Furthermore, it is very difficult to quantify just how 'valuable' an action is to any given person, as everyone has a different measuring stick and there is a whole lot to leave for interpretation in these scenarios. But how does this tie into IT?
    Well, for this topic, I will sadly have to be as bland as one possibly can be and talk about self-driving cars. I know, I know, very boring - but honestly ethics just aren't my thing. I am a very one-sided person when it comes to it, no matter how much I debate with other people - so I will always vouch for this. Self-driving cars are the most recent and clearest example of morality, and the statistics behind it are a great way to put a 'value' on any course of action or even a life. One great site that has come up with testing it is moralmachine.mit.edu. Using the statistics from the site as a baseline, we can calculate exactly how valuable the driver behind a car is compared to any combination of people, animals, ages, genders on the road. Getting stuck in an ethical dilemma does not provide any solutions - it only provides useless questions. Why are we even debating whether or not the driver should sacrifice his own life to save three innocent people? These types of questions should not even be debated over - their answer is clear, and anyone who says otherwise honestly seems like they are talking about justifying the murder of multiple individuals. A one for one example can be understood, but multiple people? 
    If we do not choose an ethical theory to follow, we'll never get anywhere significant on the topic of self-driving cars and other important things that AI will soon have to manage. However, this theory does bring out one issue. One that was ever-so-subtly hinted at way back in the day for example in the film 'Terminator'. Compared to the AI, we might be the most harmful factor. If we programmed all of our AI to be utilitarian, we would end up being classified as useless and be largely eliminated. What is the purpose of a human being once technological evolution catches up to the point where machines were able to learn at the same, or an even faster pace, than humans? Then again, what is the purpose of an AI without anything to provide for? Is the happiness of a human worth more than the environment? Is the life of a human worth more than the life of the native wildlife? Can we really even justify our own existence? Anyway that is the kind of existential dread spiral this topic leads into and it really isn't any fun to talk about, nor is it interesting to just write about without having an in-depth conversation with someone else. Everything in ethics is so incredibly subjective that the only thing a person can learn from talking about it with others is the others' views. That's it. No one will ever know any 'true' answer to ethics without also jeapordizing the entirety of society. It is futile. Just like our lives.
    Hope you have a nice week :}

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 2 - Failure.. and success!

Image
 Academset      Technically just a more advanced version of the original Computing Center for Collective Use, the Academset was one of the only few examples of a 'decent' network structure during the Soviet era. Initially built only to serve the staff of the Leningrad Scientific Center, it began expanding during the late 70s, when various other institutions (such as factories), started becoming integrated into the network. After that point, it started growing more and more until it officially became the "Leningrad information-computer network of the SSSR" and was fully fledged into its 'final' iteration - the Academset, which also established links between the satellite countries under the Soviet reign.       The network had several issues, most notably the usage of the OSI protocol demanding a high amount of main memory from the central computers. After the fall of the Soviet union, the mainframe of the network was destroyed and Russia gained access to 'g
Read more

Week 14 - Accessibility

 Accessibility Lucy     On the same note as the forum topic mentioning eye tracking, I figured I would talk about something I have always been interested in for people with disabilities. I myself do not know any such people on a personal level, but I find this solution to be the neatest. I have always been interested in "eye tracking", but it can be a bit inaccurate at times, though I feel like it would be enough for most disabilities. However, there exists another solution as well, which works off the same principle. A specific example of this would be Lucy4. Pretty much equivalent to using eye tracking to control something, except instead of eyes, one uses their head! This is magnitudes more accurate than eye tracking and would even enable people with ticks (involuntary head control) to be able to accurately give input, lest the ticks are really extremely major.      Probably one of the main disadvantages I've encountered with eye tracking when I tested it was that it i
Read more