Computer, Ethics, and Society Midterm Study Guide

uses questions and answers from our group exercises in class. Textbook: AI Ethics by Paula Boddington

Chapter 1, Question 1: What is Artificial Intelligence? What do you think AI is? What is Boddington’s perspective?

According to the textbook, AI may be understood as a technology in terns of the engineering capacities required for certain tasks and also in terms of a scientific discipline. I think AI is a search engine/tool used to complete tasks faster than a regular human being.

Chapter 1, Question 5: What does Boddington want you to get from the book?

She wants us to develop our own self autonomy of AI. She provides us with facts and occasionally her own opinion on things, but she makes it clear that she doesn’t want to tell us how we should feel and that we should develop that on our own.

Chapter 2, Question 1: From Section 2.3 under “common themes”, explain the distinction between “whole or part” and “now and later.” Next, why or how might these distinctions be relevant in our class?

The whole or part concept is the general issues about AI conceptualized as a whole, while some focus on specific issues in AI. The now and then concept focuses on the development of AI in the future and what that means for us. These distinctions are relevant to our class because we can consider these topics with it comes to our own opinion of self autonomy of AI Ethics.

Chapter 2, Question 2: List all of the titles of every subsection from 2.4. What issues do you think are relevant in AI. Give an example illustrating your answer?

Freedom and Autonomy, Transparency and Explanation, Justice and Fairness, Beneficence/Nonmaleficence, Responsibility, Trust, Privacy, Sustainability, Dignity, and Solidarity

Transparency and Explanation are relevant in AI. I feel like most people’s issues regarding AI comes from not knowing how it works and the fear mongering of it potentially taking over the world. Then with companies and businesses heavily incorporating AI into everything, people are skeptical on why and if there’s an other motive (like stealing our personal data and how it’s being used). I believe if companies/businesses were more transparent with what they’re using AI for and what they are truly doing with the data they’re collecting, maybe people would have a better response to things.

Chapter 2, Question 3: From Section 2.4.1., answer both bolded question pertaining to navigation systems, noting how it pertains to freedom and autonomy?

Question 1: A person may have reduced capacity to work out directions. Does this matter if we now can rely on smartphones? Is it merely nostalgia to wish to retain the capacity to read a paper map?

Question 2: Is this just a harmless by-product of walking along a street nose to phone? Does it matter? Consider other possible examples.

If a person has a reduced capacity to work out directions, they are going to struggle regardless if they’re using a smartphone or paper map. I don’t feel as though it really matters because that’s more a a skill issue. I think it is nostalgia to wish to retain the capacity to read a paper map because it’s not required to know when learning how to navigate in general. People can adapt. (I can use myself as an example)

Chapter 2, Question 4: From Section 2.4.3, read the “human and machine agency” section, then answer the question underneath?

Question: If there was no difference in the accuracy of the outcome, would it matter to you if you were judge by a machine or by a human? Why or why not?

I would want to still be judged by a human. It’s just a preference for me. Even if the outcome is still accurate, I just like the idea of a human telling me and explaining the outcome compared to a computer. (use OOP and the autograder for an example)

Chapter 2, Question 5: Read case study then answer exercise 9 from 2.4.7

Consider the relationships and lines of trust involved in care robots for the elderly — who has to trust whom, and why? How might trust be attained, and what might threaten it? Could trust be earned? Consider the specific issue of the provision of medication. What are the trust issues there?

Elderly patients would have to “trust” the care robots because they have to rely on the robots for essentially everything. Because they would have to rely on the robots to help them with tasks and with medicine, they would have to inherently trust them whether they want to. That’s how that “trust” is attained.

Chapter 2, Question 6: Read case study then answer exercise 10 from 2.4.9

Make the strongest case you can for the claim that such an app helps to enhance the dignity of socially isolated individuals who need some assistance, and then consider the arguments against. How do you incorporate the significance of cultural, social, and economic factors? consider the kinds of situations that might lead to the isolation of the individuals who make use of such an app. Think about the role of the employees who work through the avatars.

Using a care robot for elderly patients/socially isolated individuals could help enhance their dignity because they may feel more comfortable showing their flaws to a robot compared to a human. Use an example of a care robot cleaning the elderly. Relying on a care robot could also be detrimental to the patients because they are no longer having human interaction. Explain why this is important. You could incorporate cultural and social factors by having the robot speak the same language as the patient.

Chapter 3, Question 1: AI frequently involves attempting to extend human capacities. Are there are occasions on which we would rather have the “bare human”, even if it’s worse, and why? Then thoughts on autotune in music.

I’d rather have a “bare human.” My example is me dealing with DoorDash. I think using autotune in music is just a preference. T-pain can sing in real life, but he uses autotune as an artistic choice for his music because he likes it. Another artist, Billie Eilish, has a song where you uses/performs it using autotune as a choice. A lot of artists use a self correcting autotune to stay in pitch as well. I don’t think it’s that deep.

Chapter 3, Question 2: From Section 3.3, what is the philosophy of technology? How might this field help us think about AI?

Some philosophies that I resonate with are it focus more on attempting systematic examination of issues such as the mean of technology for society and culture and the consequences of technology for humanity and for individuals AND to address technology in general. This could help us think about AI because if we as a collected have a better understanding of technology, we could apply it to AI as well.

Chapter 3, Question 3: From Section 3.3.2, explain the issue of whether “nature is enough for us” and explain how technology might figure into this quesion

The issue of whether or not “nature is enough for us” comes from the question if technology should mimic nature or exceed it. It is said that technology takes “its inspiration from nature” and that there are certain things in nature that could be recreated and useful for humans. Example → the idea of shoes because technically shoes is a type of technology. My opinion → I don’t think nature is enough for us because we wouldn’t be having questions if technology should exceed nature if it was enough. Then, technology could bring more harm than good in attempts to exceed nature. Example → environmental decline and extinctions.

Chapter 3, Question 4: From section 3.3.4, explain the idea of “technological fix.” Find an example where the technological solution is worse than the problem. Next. give one example where a technological solution is a proper fix to a problem.

The idea of the “technological fix” is when one may think that any shortcoming in technology can just be resolved by needing more technology. One example of this solution being worse than the problem would AI in schools. I personally never used AI in high school and started using it my second year of college as a resource to learn concepts in my Computer Science classes. I took technical writing, and my instructor tried to flag me for using AI and threaten to report me for Student Misconduct when I had never AI in my life. I had to provide my logs to prove I never used it, and the instructor apologized and dismissed the situation. There have been other situations were people purposefully dumb down their responses so that they aren’t accused of using AI, and that’s a hit on our intelligence. One example of this solution being a proper fix would be check in services in businesses. Instead of waiting in a long line to be assessed, you can check in using their website. This is more efficient and allows a patient to be seen faster, or anyone in general.

Chapter 3, Question 5: From Section 3.5, list the “implicit values of technology” and explain one of these items.

Implicit values: Knowledge, Control, Speed, Efficiency, Consistency and Uniformity, Neutrality, and Technology and Us.

Knowledge:

Speed:

Chapter 3, Question 6: Exercise 10 from 3.5 → Consider how technology that you use in everyday life — whether out of coice or necessity — speed up various tasks. Consider the pros and cons and any wider effects of increasing expectations of speed.

Driving a car. I do this as a necessity to get me from point A to point B. The pros of driving are that it’s significantly faster than walking, you can control the temp of the vehicle to your liking, comfortability, etc. The cons of driving include unpredictability, car crashes that could lead to death, traffic, etc. The expectations of speed eludes to how we view society because America is a fast paced environment.

Chapter 4, Question 1: From Section 4.1, explain the “simple account of methods in applied ethics.” Next, apply to exercise 1 (initial thoughts about LAMDA case)

The simple account is picking a case, forming our own judgement (intuition) about the case, and applying reasoning to the soundness of your judgement. In the LAMDA case, I feel as though he had a right to express his concerns about the possibility of the AI being sentient without the fear of losing his job. He lost me when he went to the New York Times about the situation while he got paid leave. Now he doesn’t seem as genuine to me because it’s giving that you wanted to make a name and a check off a situation.

Chapter 4, Question 2: From Section 4.1.1, pick one of the “problems in the methodology” and explain it

One problem was “the nature of any reasoning and the justification of any ethical theory used.” The problem is trying to dictate ethics in general when ethics is supposed to be a matter of opinion. Context also matters. One could pick and choose whether something is right or wrong in similar situations with different answers. If the action is inherently wrong, why would the answer change?

Chapter 4, Question 3: Section 4.2 addresses general problems for methodology in AI ethics. Explain the “speed, change, and hype.”

AI (and technology in general) is advancing quicker than humans can keep up with. With this, it’s harder for humans to get accustomed to because AI has already changed tremendously. There are questions on whether the reactions of this change/hype are being blown out of proportion or if it’s justified.

Chapter 4, Question 4: Exercise 8 → Imagine that AI has progressed so that we each only have to do one hour’s work a week, and nobody wants for everything. Would this change our basic moral values in any way?

If AI is doing all of the work for us humans, we will regress in society. For one, people won’t respect workers because they’ll feel as though the worker hasn’t really put in the work to be respected. Society could adjust to this “norm",” but there would be a social regression of how e view and treat workers and each other. I also feel as though if humans aren’t putting in the work to do their job or daily tasks, we’ll become lazy and lost motivation for productivity because there wouldn’t really be a need to be productive.

Chapter 4, Question 5: Take any example of science fiction involoving any form of AI. or robotics, and first consider how it presents issues of value

(spoilers) In Spiderman: Brand New Day, Peter Parker invented a power suppression tool to suppress his spidey senses, so it wouldn’t take over his human form. For him, he valued being human so much that he had to manipulate his genes to his standard. However this would be a major problem in the wrong hands. One could use this tool to suppress all superhumans and their abilities and use them in any way they like (like how they used Jean Grey as a test dummy for their own experiment).

Chapter 4, Question 6: From memory, describe how AI is often pictured in images. Next, how might thismatter to our aims in AI ethics?

AI in images are usually presented wrong. For example, in a photo or video, a human may have inaccurate limbs or moves in an inaccurate or un-proportionate way. I feel like sometimes AI in images, videos, social media, etc. are meant to deceive or used as a shock factor to get our attention. This applies to AI ethics because how far can someone go or what’s the imit AI can reach before people deem it an issue.