"Meaningful Human Control over the Evaluative" (Dr. Scott Robbins) In an increasingly autonomous world, it is becoming clear that one thing we cannot delegate to machines is moral accountability. Machines cannot be held morally accountable or responsible for their actions. This becomes problematic when a machine has an output that has a significant impact on human beings. Examples of machines that have caused such impact are widespread and include machines evaluating loan applications, evaluating criminals for sentencing, targeting and killing people, driving cars, and whatever digital assistants are supposed to do. The question that governments, NGOs, academics, and the general public are (or should be) asking is: how do we keep meaningful human control (MHC) over these machines? I argue that keeping meaningful human control over machines cannot be achieved without restricting the decisions we delegate to machines to the descriptive.
Events
"On Self- building technologies" (Dr. Charlotte Gauvry) The recent literature has convincingly demonstrated certain perverse effects of what has been called the “merging with AI.” Susan Schneider (2019) even argued that different merging techniques, for example the implantation of silicon chips in our brains, could lead to a dissolution of our selfhood. In my talk, I propose to discuss this hypothesis based on a recent provocative article by François Kammerer, which considers, on the contrary, the possibility of "self-building technologies:"artificial technologies (paradigmatically some digital app) would actually allow us to “strengthen our selfhood.”
"Governing global change through AI safety" (Dr. Apolline Taillandier) This presentation focuses on the recent history of “AI safety,” understood as a set of strategies for mitigating long-term AI risk. AI safety brings together computer science and policy expertise: while some AI safety researchers have redesigned algorithmic training methods for ensuring control over the goals or behavior of “human-level” AI, or systems with “artificial general intelligence,” (AGI) AI safety policy experts have developed scenarios and metrics of AI progress in order to anticipate and prepare for uncertain technological breakthroughs through specific models of governance. I show how AI safety expertise intersects transhumanist debates about the singularity and the possibility to predict and tame the emergence of a posthuman kind of intelligence; economic models of rational behavior in computer science; and a realist model of global security >as a product of interest-based cooperation and alignment.
"A conceptual analysis" (Dr. Scott Robbins) Meaningful human control (MHC) is an oft-used phrase in the ethical literature on artificial intelligence (AI). But what is meaningful human control (MHC)? Let’s break that phrase down because it is quite ambiguous.
Full Title: "When artificial intelligence outperforms human social cognition" (Dr. Uwe Peters) Suppose an artificial intelligence (AI) excels us in social cognition in that it ascribes psychological characteristics to people more accurately than us. It seems epistemically rational to then set aside our own judgments on those characteristics and defer to the AI. After all, being more accurate about people is better than being less accurate. I argue that this intuitive view is epistemically and ethically problematic.
Full Title: "Swarm Learning as a fully decentralized and confidentiality-enabling machine learning approach for disease classification" (Prof. Dr. Joachim Schultze & Stefanie Warnat-Herresthal) Fast and reliable detection of patients with severe and heterogenous illnesses is a major goal of precision medicine. We recently illustrated that leukemia patients are identified by machine learning (ML) based on their blood transcriptomes. However, there is an increasing divide between what is technically possible and what is allowed because of privacy legislation. To facilitate integration of any medical data from any data owner world-wide without violating privacy laws, we here introduce Swarm Learning (SL), a decentralized machine learning approach uniting edge computing, blockchain-based peer-to-peer networking and coordination as well as confidentiality protection without the need for a central coordinator thereby going beyond federated learning.
"Norbert Wiener and cybernetic metaphysics" (Dr. Tobias Keiling) Tobias Keiling will present and comment Peter Galison’s Paper on Norbert Wiener’s critique of the worldview of cybernetics. See Peter Galison. 1994. “The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision,” Critical Inquiry Vol. 21/1.: 228-266
Full Title: “On Digital Ethics for Artificial Intelligence and Information Fusion in the Defense Domain” (Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Koch) For knowledge itself is power... Francis Bacon’s statement on achieving power as the meaning of all knowledge marks the beginning of the modern project. At the latest since the advent of AI in the defense domain, however, technology meant for the benefit of humanity may turn against humanity. This specific type of instrumental knowledge makes the modern crisis as visible as in spotlight. Ethical knowledge of man and his nature must complement Bacon’s knowledge. There is an 'Ecology of Man': he does not make himself; he is responsible for himself and others. How can the AI and information fusion community technically support responsible use of the power we are harvesting from AI and Fusion? To argue more specifically, we consider documents of the German Bundeswehr, founded in the 1950s when the term AI was coined.
Full Title: "Extended Mindreading and the Tracking of Digital Footprints" (Dr. Uwe Peters) There has been much philosophical and empirical research on mindreading, our ability to attribute mental states to people to explain, predict, or influence their actions. It is commonly assumed that mindreading is situated within an individual’s head. Here I challenge this assumption by relating it to Clark and Chalmers’ hypothesis of extended cognition, the view that the physical realizers of cognition can include artefacts outside the body. I argue that if we endorse common conditions for extended cognition, then there is reason to believe that people’s mindreading is often partly realized by (vs. merely causally coupled to) artefacts, specifically, computer algorithms on the Internet that track our digital footprints to infer our preferences, interests, etc. from them to personalize websites.
"Ethical challenges of merging biological and artificial cognition" (Dr. Johannes Lierfeld; response: Pater Dr. Dr. Justinus C. Pech, Hochschule Heiligenkreuz) The notion of a bridge between protein and silicon has slowly evolved into a reality due to the development of brain-computer interfaces or brain-machine interfaces (BCIs / BMIs). Besides some alarmism there is much hope to achieve wonderful things with and through the use of BCIs. However, as fruitful the applications can be in the best case, as severe the ethical repercussions would be in a worst-case scenario. Thus, serious ethical challenges monger around the usage of these mind-machine-bridges, since their applications might interfere with personal integrity, identity, and accountability. Especially the field of affective BCIs poses cascades of ethical concerns regarding their operative field: human affections and emotions.
"Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me (2019) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021)" (Prof. Dr. Marion Gymnich ) It stands to reason that fictional representations of AI in general, and of androids in particular, which can be found across a wide range of science-fiction novels, movies and TV series, have had a considerable impact on how many people are likely to imagine AI today. In recent years, two of the most renowned contemporary British writers have published novels that feature androids very prominently: Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me and Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.
‘Einführung‘ (Prof. Dr. Sabine Mainberger & Prof. Dr. Christian Moser) sowie ‚Gabentausch und Versöhnungspraxis. James Tullys Konzept einer „transformative reconciliation“ (Prof. Dr. Andreas Gelhard) Teil der Ringvorlesung "Mauss Revisited. Aktuelle Überlegungen zu (Gaben-)Tausch und Sozialität" Für Versuche, Sozialität ohne utilitaristische Reduktion zu denken, ist das auf den französischen Soziologen und Ethnologen Marcel Mauss zurückgehende Theorem der Gabe noch immer produktiv. Denn in der Gabe kommen alle Dimensionen gesellschaftlichen Lebens zusammen: ökonomische, politische, religiöse, moralische, ästhetische; sie steht damit quer zu den ausdifferenzierten Systemen, als die wir Gesellschaft heute sehen. Mit Rekurs auf die Gabe können von diesen Einteilungen verschüttete Querverbindungen zwischen den einzelnen Bereichen sichtbar gemacht werden. Dies kann auf dem Wege historischer Tiefenbohrungen geschehen, aber auch durch die Analyse gegenwärtiger Phänomene.
(Prof. Dr. Frank Adloff, Universität Hamburg) Teil der Ringvorlesung "Mauss Revisited. Aktuelle Überlegungen zu (Gaben-)Tausch und Sozialität" Für Versuche, Sozialität ohne utilitaristische Reduktion zu denken, ist das auf den französischen Soziologen und Ethnologen Marcel Mauss zurückgehende Theorem der Gabe noch immer produktiv. Denn in der Gabe kommen alle Dimensionen gesellschaftlichen Lebens zusammen: ökonomische, politische, religiöse, moralische, ästhetische; sie steht damit quer zu den ausdifferenzierten Systemen, als die wir Gesellschaft heute sehen. Mit Rekurs auf die Gabe können von diesen Einteilungen verschüttete Querverbindungen zwischen den einzelnen Bereichen sichtbar gemacht werden. Dies kann auf dem Wege historischer Tiefenbohrungen geschehen, aber auch durch die Analyse gegenwärtiger Phänomene.
"Herder, Goethe und der 'literarische Handelsverkehr'" (Prof. Dr. Christian Moser) Part of the lecture series "Mauss Revisited. Aktuelle Überlegungen zu (Gaben-)Tausch und Sozialität"
"'Gabe'-Praktiken in der gegenwärtigen Wirtschaft" (Prof. Dr. Michael Hutter) Part of the lecture series "Mauss Revisited. Aktuelle Überlegungen zu (Gaben-)Tausch und Sozialität"
"Tischszenen mit François Ier und Benvenuto Cellini" (Prof. Dr. Sabine Mainberger) Part of the lecture series "Mauss Revisited. Aktuelle Überlegungen zu (Gaben-)Tausch und Sozialität"
"Zur Sozioprudenz des Gabentauschs" (Prof. Dr. Clemens Albrecht) Part of the lecture series "Mauss Revisited. Aktuelle Überlegungen zu (Gaben-)Tausch und Sozialität"
"Zur Vorgeschichte der Theorie der Gabe von Marcel Mauss" (Prof. Dr. Beate Wagner-Hasel, Universität Hannover) Part of the lecture series "Mauss Revisited. Aktuelle Überlegungen zu (Gaben-)Tausch und Sozialität"
(Prof. Dr. Kathrin Chlench-Priber) Part of the lecture series "Mauss Revisited. Aktuelle Überlegungen zu (Gaben-)Tausch und Sozialität"
(Prof. Dr. Benno Zabel) Part of the lecture series "Mauss Revisited. Aktuelle Überlegungen zu (Gaben-)Tausch und Sozialität"