Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
AI and a Very Idealistic Description of Evil
Being interested in Artificial Intelligence, when I ran across this article in The Atlantic I was hoping to find something interesting. The article focuses on Judea Pearl, an AI researcher who pioneered Bayesian (calling Midget Faded Rattlesnake) networks for machine leaning. Pearl is disappointed that most AI research nowadays is centered around his previous bailiwick of machine learning (what he calls fancy curve fitting) and not around his new interest, which is around causal reasoning models.
This is all well and good and somewhat interesting, however near the end of the article he and the interviewer talk about free will and have the following exchange about evil.
Hartnett: Now that you’ve brought up free will, I guess I should ask you about the capacity for evil, which we generally think of as being contingent upon an ability to make choices. What is evil?
Pearl: It’s the belief that your greed or grievance supersedes all standard norms of society. For example, a person has something akin to a software module that says, “You are hungry, therefore you have permission to act to satisfy your greed or grievance.” But you have other software modules that instruct you to follow the standard laws of society. One of them is called compassion. When you elevate your grievance above those universal norms of society, that’s evil.
This is a very simplistic and idealistic conception of evil that can only be believed by a determinism addled atheist. This description hardly rises to the level of evil, as it explains harmful actions by assuming wrong headed, selfish motives. This description leaves no room for true malevolence. People commit evil acts sometimes for a gain or in response to a grievance, but sometimes people inflict pain or harm on another for no other reason than to cause the harm or pain itself. That is malevolence, that is evil.
What I learned from this article is that I don’t want AI scientists like Pearl programming in their simplistic conceptions of good and evil into our future AI robots.
Published in Technology
I think what he describes is just plain wrong-doing, not necessarily evil. For me, evil is top-level badness, more along the lines of intentional infliction of harm on another person, especially in the absence of any need. A step lower than evil might be termed “wickedness,” in which a person doesn’t try to hurt others but doesn’t try NOT to, either. I don’t know … maybe I’m being too particular.
It’s a good one. But, like Katie, I think it too narrowly equates evil with malice.
The Christian concept of evil fundamentally defines it as an absence of good, as darkness is an absence of light. So it can be a failure to love — callous indifference — and not only hate.
Where identification gets tricky is corruption.
Say, I have a barbell with a little rust on the corners. The barbell is still essentially good because it serves its purpose just as well.
On the other hand, just a slight contagion can make a generally wholesome meal poisonous. If I become ill and vomit, none of that good served its purpose.
Malice and predatory violence are easy to recognize as evil and condemn because their harm is obvious and their appearance ugly. Evil in the form of corruption is often overlooked because there remain good elements that attract and beautify. The poisonous meal might look, smell, and taste great. The beautiful woman… The charismatic leader… The engrossing art… The enriching labor…
This was my thought, too. And it needn’t be restricted to pleasure. The example of the Nazis was brought up as a counterpoint. They felt they had an even loftier goal than individual pleasure: societal and racial uplift. That was a gain for them that justified ignoring “universal norms” (if not committing genocide is considered a norm). I can’t find any reason to object to his definition. This is another case of a God-neutral idea that seems to be attracting scorn for not explicitly marrying itself to the idea of God. I think it works both with and without Him.
I don’t say that there’s no conscience of course, but I do think it insufficient to keep most people behaving morally (whatever that is). The culture needs to be morally grounded to or else the conscience will be formed to match. I think it’s a two way street.
Does raising cattle in cramped and brutish conditions only to be killed and eaten become any less evil….. wait that’s not evil at all.
That all depends on where the idea of good and evil come from. If it’s divine revelation then only the divine can determine what is good and evil (as opposed to useful or preferable for us humans), while we can derive, infer, and interpret that revelation as new situations arise. If there is no revelation or other clearly identifiable transcendent then of course society itself shapes what is goo and what is evil, probably as some kind of aggregation of what the inhabitants of that society think. Some probably think us evil for our yummy beef practices, we think others might be evil for their eating of dogs and cats (well, evil for eating dogs anyway).
I thought the definition of evil had already been settled. It’s being out of alignment with Obama’s values.
Amen to that. But, that’s probably what will happen. <sigh>
I’m a bit uncomfortable with this. External can be a belief in God, in the teachings of Jesus i.e., religion, and this can be most any mainstream religion. Without these, we have no basis for a moral compass. These days, people who say that their morality is what they themselves believe (internal) are the poorer for it – and it is a quick slide into justifying any of their actions to themselves, i.e., solipsism. “Without God,” Dostoevsky famously wrote, “all is permitted.”
The definition of evil I think would be incomplete without including an element of wantonness.
We can talk about the “banality of evil” but that’s merely to point out that all people carry that capacity within them; There’s a sort of capriciousness or callousness that speaks to a deep lack of concern for (or open hostility to) the well-being of others which imbues otherwise bad acts with evil.
Is it fair to ask whether we’ve attempted to codify the difference between merely bad acts and evil acts with the distinction in law between misdemeanors and felonies, which are “crimes of moral turpitude”?
Barbara,
I don’t think of belief in God is necessarily external. What I am arguing is that threat of external punishment (even if it is belief in a judgmental god) is insufficient to keep men moral. Men act morally when their conscience won’t let them act immorally (or punish them psychologically after the fact like Rodion). Religion is great for teaching us the what or morality, but the why works best when it is not a rational thought.
The fun ones, dear boy. The fun ones.
I didn’t know Dosteovsky wrote that (although I had heard the quote) but I recommend reading his “Notes from Underground” before making assumptions about how to put good and evil into AI apps.