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A regular computer program is written by someone. It goes wrong, you blame the coders. "Machine learning" is written by an omnipotent blank

qntm

@qntm

Sep 19, 2017

"Nobody wrote it! It wrote itself! All we did was select the raw data and write the procedure it used to do that."

"God did it."

It's marketing. It's ineffable. It's the same dull informational plumbing we've been doing this whole time but with extra steps.

qntm

@qntm

Sep 19, 2017

When a human reaches the age of majority, broadly, they, not their parents/guardians, become responsible for their actions

qntm

@qntm

Sep 19, 2017

(I'm not a lawyer so that statement was probably wrong in eighty ways in every jurisdiction but bear with me)

qntm

@qntm

Sep 19, 2017

Computer programs are not adults yet. When you construct a program, you are responsible for its behaviour. Or should be.

How wrong am I?

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pretty right - generally actions get harder to attribute the less legible the path between you and the results is

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Rule Of Law

@RuleOfFlaw

Aug 27, 2017

good luck I'm behind seven moral agents responding to incentives

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and

a free moral agent in your chain introduces a lot of illegibility, or alternatively accepts responsibility (they "could've prevented it")

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and

our machines are not quite full moral agents yet but they're getting there

11:00 PM · Sep 19, 2017Twitter Web Client

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and

There's moral philosophy being done in this direction - see the idea of "moral luck" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_luck