IMO, it’s hard to get a consensus for Heuristic C at the moment even though it kind of seems obvious.
Consider that humanity couldn’t achieve a consensus around banning or not using cigarettes, leaded gasoline, or ozone-destroying chemicals, until they had done a huge amount of highly visible damage. There must have been plenty of arguments about their potential danger based on established science, and clear empirical evidence of the damage that they actually caused, far earlier, but such consensus still failed to form until much later, after catastrophic amounts of damage had already been caused. The consensus against drunk driving also only formed after extremely clear and undeniable evidence about its danger (based on accident statistics) became available.
I’m skeptical that more intentionally creating ethical design patterns could have helped such consensus form earlier in those cases, or in the case of AI x-safety, as it just doesn’t seem to address the main root causes or bottlenecks for the lack of such consensus or governance failures, which IMO are things like:
natural diversity of human opinions, when looking at the same set of arguments/evidence
lack of extremely clear/undeniable evidence of harm
democracy’s natural difficulties around concentrated interests imposing diffused harms (due to “rational ignorance” of voters and collective action problems)
Something that’s more likely to work is “persuasion design patterns”, like what helped many countries pass anti-GMO legislation despite lack of clear scientific evidence for their harm, but I think we’re all loathe to use such tactics.
It seems heuristic C applies to cigarettes, leaded gas, and ozone-destroying chemicals. If we had already had heuristic C and sufficient ethical bridges around it, we would have been much more equipped to respond to those threats more quickly. Your points 1-3 do seem like valid difficulties for the promotion of heuristic C. They may be related to some of the heuristics D-I.
I agree we need effective persuasion and perhaps persuasion design patterns, but persuasion focused on promoting heuristic C to aid in promoting AI x-safety doesn’t seem like wasted effort to me.
Okay, but: it’s also find individuals who are willing to speak for heuristic C, in a way I suspect differs from what it was like for leaded gasoline and from what I remember as a kid in the late 80′s about the ozone layer.
It’s a fair point that I shouldn’t expect “consensus”, and should’ve written and conceptualized that part differently, but I think heuristic C is also colliding with competing ethical heuristics in ways the ozone situation didn’t.
What you are saying about persuasion is important in both directions. Have you every encountered agnotology? It’s part of sociology, and it looks at the creation of unknowing. In the cases you list above, including tobacco and lead, there has been research into the ways that industries marshalled money, resources, and persuasion to create doubt and prevent regulation.
So there’s maybe an additional important heuristic, which is that profit will motivate individuals to ignore harm, and if they have power and money, they will use institutions to persuade people not to notice.
It’s not the entirety of the difficulty, but it is something that ethics might help to correct.
Consider that humanity couldn’t achieve a consensus around banning or not using cigarettes, leaded gasoline, or ozone-destroying chemicals, until they had done a huge amount of highly visible damage. There must have been plenty of arguments about their potential danger based on established science, and clear empirical evidence of the damage that they actually caused, far earlier, but such consensus still failed to form until much later, after catastrophic amounts of damage had already been caused. The consensus against drunk driving also only formed after extremely clear and undeniable evidence about its danger (based on accident statistics) became available.
I’m skeptical that more intentionally creating ethical design patterns could have helped such consensus form earlier in those cases, or in the case of AI x-safety, as it just doesn’t seem to address the main root causes or bottlenecks for the lack of such consensus or governance failures, which IMO are things like:
natural diversity of human opinions, when looking at the same set of arguments/evidence
lack of extremely clear/undeniable evidence of harm
democracy’s natural difficulties around concentrated interests imposing diffused harms (due to “rational ignorance” of voters and collective action problems)
Something that’s more likely to work is “persuasion design patterns”, like what helped many countries pass anti-GMO legislation despite lack of clear scientific evidence for their harm, but I think we’re all loathe to use such tactics.
It seems heuristic C applies to cigarettes, leaded gas, and ozone-destroying chemicals. If we had already had heuristic C and sufficient ethical bridges around it, we would have been much more equipped to respond to those threats more quickly. Your points 1-3 do seem like valid difficulties for the promotion of heuristic C. They may be related to some of the heuristics D-I.
I agree we need effective persuasion and perhaps persuasion design patterns, but persuasion focused on promoting heuristic C to aid in promoting AI x-safety doesn’t seem like wasted effort to me.
Okay, but: it’s also find individuals who are willing to speak for heuristic C, in a way I suspect differs from what it was like for leaded gasoline and from what I remember as a kid in the late 80′s about the ozone layer.
It’s a fair point that I shouldn’t expect “consensus”, and should’ve written and conceptualized that part differently, but I think heuristic C is also colliding with competing ethical heuristics in ways the ozone situation didn’t.
What you are saying about persuasion is important in both directions. Have you every encountered agnotology? It’s part of sociology, and it looks at the creation of unknowing. In the cases you list above, including tobacco and lead, there has been research into the ways that industries marshalled money, resources, and persuasion to create doubt and prevent regulation.
So there’s maybe an additional important heuristic, which is that profit will motivate individuals to ignore harm, and if they have power and money, they will use institutions to persuade people not to notice.
It’s not the entirety of the difficulty, but it is something that ethics might help to correct.