Ethical Machines
I have to roll my eyes at the constant click bait headlines on technology and ethics. If we want to get anything done, we need to go deeper. That’s where I come in. I’m Reid Blackman, a former philosophy professor turned AI ethics advisor to government and business. If you’re looking for a podcast that has no tolerance for the superficial, try out Ethical Machines.
Episodes
One company builds the LLM. Another company uses that model for their purposes. How do we know that the ethical standards of the first one match the ethical standards of the second one? How does the second company know they are using a technology that is commensurate with their own ethical standards? This is a conversation I had with David Danks, Professor OF Philosophy and data science UCSD, almost 3 years ago. But the conversatio...
How can one of the most high risk industries also be the safest place to test AI? That’s what I discuss today with former Navy Commander Zac Staples, currently Founder and CEO of Fathom, an industrial cybersecurity company focused on the maritime industry. He walks me through how the military performs its due diligence on new technologies, explains that there are lots of “watchers” of new technologies as they’re tested and us...
Deepfakes to deceive people? No good. How about a digital duplicate of a lost loved one so you can keep talking to them? What’s the impact of having a child talk to the digital duplicate of their dead father? Should you leave instructions about what can be done with your digital identify in your will? Could you lose control of your digital duplicate? These questions are ethically fascinating and crucial in themselves. They also rai...
AI is leading the economic charge. In fact, without the massive investments in AI, our economy would look a lot worse right now. But what are the social and political costs that we incur? My guest, Karen Yeung, a professor at Birmingham Law School and School of Computer Science, argues that investments in AI our consolidating power while disempowering the rest of society. Our individual autonomy and our collective cohesion are simu...
The engineering and data science students of today are tomorrow’s tech innovators. IF we want them to develop ethically sound technology, they better have a good grip on what ethics is all about. But how should we teach them? The same way we teach ethics in philosophy? Or is something different needed given the kinds of organizational forces they’ll find themselves subject to once they’re working. Steven Kelts, a lecturer in Prince...
Giving AI systems autonomy in a military context seems like a bad idea. Of course AI shouldn’t “decide” which targets should be killed and/or blown up. Except…maybe it’s not so obvious after all. That’s what my guest, Michael Horowitz, formerly of the DOD and now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania argues. Agree with him or not, he makes a compelling case we need to take seriously. In fact, you may even conclude with him ...
In August, I recorded a discussion with David Ryan Polgar, Founder of the nonprofit All Tech Is Human, in front of an audience of around 200 people. We talked about how AI mediated experiences make us feel sadder, that the tech companies don’t really care about this, and how people can organize to push those companies to take our long term well being more seriously.
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Wendell Wallach, who has been in the AI ethics game longer than just about anyone and has several books to his name on the subject, talks about his dissatisfaction with talk of “value alignment,” why traditional moral theories are not helpful for doing AI ethics, and how we can do better.
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It would be crazy to attribute legal personhood to AI, right? But then again, corporations are regarded as legal persons and there seems to be good reason for doing so. In fact, some rivers are classified as legal persons. My guest, David Gunkel, author of many books including “Person Thing Robot” argues that the classic legal distinction between ‘person’ and ‘thing’ doesn’t apply well to AI. How should we regard AI in a way that a...
LLMs behave in unpredictable ways. That’s a gift and a curse. It both allows for its “creativity” and makes it hard to control (a bit like a real artist, actually). In this episode, we focus on the cyber risks of AI with Walter Haydock, a former national security policy advisor and the Founder of StackAware.
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AI can stand between you and getting a job. That means for you to make money and support yourself and your family, you may have to convince an AI that you’re the right person for the job. And yet, AI can be biased and fail in all sorts of ways. This is a conversation with Hilke Schellmann, investigative journalist and author of ‘The algorithm” along with her colleague Mona Sloane, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Data Science an...
We want accurate AI, right? As long as it’s accurate, we’re all good? My guest, Will Landecker, CEO Accountable Algorithm, explains why accuracy is just one metric among many to aim for. In fact, we have to make tradeoffs across things like accuracy, relevance, and normative (including ethical) considerations in order to get a usable model. We also cover whether explainability is important and whether it’s even on the menu and the ...
Should we allow autonomous AI systems? Who is accountable if things go sideways? And how is AI going to transform the future of military work? All this and more with my guest, Rosaria Taddeo, Professor of Digital Ethics and Defense Technologies at the University of Oxford.
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The Silicon Valley titans talk a lot about intelligence and super intelligence of AI…but what is intelligence, anyway? My guest, former philosopher professor and now Director at Gartner Philip Walsh argues the SV folks are fundamentally confused about what intelligence is. It’s not, he argues, like horsepower, which can be objectively measured. Instead, whether we ascribe intelligence to something is a matter of what we communally ...
How can we solve AI’s problems if we don’t understand where they came from? Originally aired in season one.
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Tech companies are racing to build and sell agentic. The vision is one in which countless AI agents are acting on our behalf: searching the web, making transactions, interacting with other AI agents. But my guest Avijit Ghosh, Applied Policy Researcher at Hugging Face, explains why we’re not even close to having the appropriate safeguards in place. What are the massive gaps and what would it take to close them? That’s the topic of ...
We’re told that algorithms on social media are manipulating us. But is that true? What is manipulation? Can an AI really do it? And is it necessarily a bad thing? These questions and more with philosopher Michael Klenk. Originally aired in season one.
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We often defer to the judgment of experts. I usually defer to my doctor’s judgment when he diagnoses me, I defer to quantum physicists when they talk to me about string theory, etc. I don’t say “well, that’s interesting, I’ll take it under advisement” and then form my own beliefs. Any beliefs I have on those fronts I replace with their beliefs. But what if an AI “knows” more than us? It is an authority in the field in which we’re q...
Are claims about AI destroying humanity just more AI hype we should ignore? My guests today, Risto Uuk and Torben Swoboda assess three popular arguments for why we should dismiss them and focus solely on the AI risks that are here today. But they find each argument flawed, arguing that, unless some fourth powerful argument comes along, we should devote resources to identifying and avoiding potential existential risks to humanity po...
I have to admit, AI can do some amazing things. More specifically, it looks like it can perform some impressive intellectual feats. But is it actually intelligent? Does it understand? Or is it just really good at statistics? This and more in my conversation with Lisa Titus, former professor of philosophy at the University of Denver and now AI Policy Manager at Meta. Originally aired in season one.
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