IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2016 - 26

associated with newer technologies,
we also tend to forget the multiple
times we've responded to the voice of
our GPS as if it were a real person or
the reverence we direct towards our
mobile devices. Our values regarding
the ubiquity of technology in our lives
have already fundamentally shifted.
Now with artificial intelligence on the
rise we get the unique opportunity to
decide what parts of our humanity we
feel are worth automating. Or not.
This process is about much more
than standards or regulations. I'm not
interested in creating a set of rules
just for the sake of clarity or legal
purposes. If we are truly at the end
of the human era or at a point in our
evolution where machines may gain
a prominence in our lives like never
before, now is a great time to illuminate our Manifesto of Humanity.
I interviewed Steve Omohundro
for this book to discuss his ideas on
ethics and AI. I closed our conversation with a final question I often
like to ask interviewees, which is,
"What's the question nobody asks
you that you wish they would?" I do
this because many times experts
like Omohundro get asked similar questions based on their most
popular theories and I always wonder what's on their minds they think
journalists may have missed. Here's
what he had to say: "I don't see a lot
of people asking, 'What is human
happiness?' or 'What is the model
of a human society?' People often
wonder if AI is going to kill them, but
they don't think about the fact that if
we had a clear vision of what we're
going for with these bigger types
of questions, then we could shape
technology based on the vision of
where humanity should go."
Here is a summary of the primary ideas from this excerpt:
■ Human Values Should Be Central in the Creation of Artificial
Intelligence. Ethics as an afterthought won't work in the wide-

spread adoption of autonomous
systems. "Evolved" AI programs
that won't allow human intervention make ethical standards useless unless incorporated at the
very earliest stages of development. As Stuart Russell noted,
these values-based directives
should also be applied to nonintelligent systems to shift the
goal of the AI industry from seeking generalized "intelligence" to
outcomes that can be provably
aligned with human values.
■ It's Time to Break the Silos.
While it's common for siloes to
exist within academia, researchers, programmers, and the companies funding their work have an
ethical responsibility to break
these barriers regarding to the
production of AI. In the same way
sociologists adhere to standards
in how they create surveys or
other research to study volunteers,
developers need to apply similar
criteria to the machines or algorithms they're creating that directly
connect with human users.
■ AI Needs to Incorporate Ethics
By Design. Whether its IRL or
a different methodology, issues
regarding Values and Ethics
need to be a standard starting
point for AI developers in academia and corporate sectors
around the world.

Thank you to Steve Omohundro for
alerting the author to the document
in [2].

References
[1] S. Omohundro, "Autonomous technology and the greater human good," J. Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 303-315, 2014.
[2] United Nations, Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, General Assembly resolution 217 A, Paris, France, 10 Dec. 1948;
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/.
[3] United Nations, "History of the document,"
Universal Declaration of Human Rights; http://
www.un.org/en/sections/universal-declaration/
history-document/, accessed Nov. 2016.
[4] J. Maynard, "Does artificial intelligence
really threaten mankind? Fears of Stephen
Hawking, Elon Musk stir debate," Tech
Times, Dec. 2014; http://www.techtimes.
com/articles/21672/20141207/artificialintelligence-really-threaten-mankind-fearsstephen-hawking-elon-musk.htm.
[5] AAAI, "The Twelfth Annual AAAI Conference
on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital
Entertainment," Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Palo Alto, CA,
2014; http://www.aaai.org/home.html.
[6] "Introduction," 3rd International Workshop
on AI, Ethics and Society February 2017,
San Francisco, USA; http://www.cse.unsw.edu
.au/~tw/aiethics/AI_Ethics/Introduction.html.
[7] M. Anderson and S.L. Anderson, Towards
Ensuring Ethical Behavior from Autonomous
Systems: A Case-Supported Principle-Based
Paradigm, http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/
FSS/FSS14/paper/view/9106/9131.
[8] J. Barrat, Our Final Invention: Artificial
Intelligence and the End of the Human Era,
2016; http://www.jamesbarrat.com/.
[9] S. Russell and P. Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Pearson,
2010; http://www.mypearsonstore.com/
bookstore/artificial-intelligence-a-modernapproach-coursesmart-9780136067337.
[10] Interview with Jaron Lanier, "The Myth of
AI" on Edge.org, November, 2014, http://edge
.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-the-myth-of-ai.
[11] A. Moon, "Human-Robot Interaction and
Roboethics - Researcher in training;" http://
profile.amoon.ca/, accessed Nov. 2016.
[12] ORI, "ORI - About," Open Robotics Initiative, 2016; http://www.openroboethics
.org/about/
[13] ORI, "ORI - Technology," Open Robotics
Initiative, 2016; http://www.openroboethics
.org/ori-code/
[14] E. Calisgan, AJ. Moon, C. Bassani,
F. Ferreira, F. Operto, G. Veruggio, E. Croft,
and H.F. Machiel Van der Loos, "Open
roboethics pilot: accelerating policy
design,implementation and demonstration of
socially acceptable robot behaviours," http://
conferences.law.stanford.edu/werobot/
wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2013/04/
Calisgan_Ergunv2.pdf.

Author Information
John C. Havens is Executive Director
of The Global Initiative for Ethical
Considerations in the Design of
Autonomous Systems and author of,
Heartificial Intelligence. Email: John
.Havens.US@ieee.org.

Acknowledgment
This article is an excerpt from Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our
Humanity to Maximize Machines,
Tarcher/Penguin, 2016, pp. 157-168;
reprinted with permission of the author.
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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DECEmber 2016

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://http:// http://www.un.org/en/sections/universal-declaration/ http://www.techtimes http://www.aaai.org/home.html http://www.cse.unsw.edu http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ http://www.jamesbarrat.com/ http://www.mypearsonstore.com/ http://www.Edge.org http://edge http://http:// http://profile.amoon.ca/ http://www.openroboethics http://www.openroboethics http://http:// http://conferences.law.stanford.edu/werobot/

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