Robot warriors to get a guide to ethics

Thanks to Mike Treder for blogging about this over at the IEET Ethical Technology blog.

According to this MSNBC story:

Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, is in the first stages of developing an "ethical governor," a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire. His book on the subject, "Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots," comes out this month.

He argues not only can robots be programmed to behave more ethically on the battlefield, they may actually be able to respond better than human soldiers.

It will be interesting to see what Arkin says in his book. Is anyone sufficiently interested in this subject to get hold of a copy and review it for JET?

Western forces engaged in operations in the Middle East already use robots of various kinds, but always with a human in the decision-making loop. The question that confronts us in the future is what happens when we develop robots that are capable of making their own decisions - and, indeed, whether we should be doing this at all:

No matter where the robots are deployed however, there is always a human involved in the decision-making, directing where a robot should fly and what munitions the robot should use if it encounters resistance.

Humans aren't expected to be removed any time soon. Arkin's ethical governor is designed for a more traditional war where civilians have evacuated the war zone and anyone pointing a weapon at U.S. troops can be considered a target.

Arkin's challenge is to translate the 150-plus years of codified, written military law into terms that robots can understand and interpret themselves. In many ways, creating an independent war robot is easier than many other types of artificial intelligence because the laws of war have existed for over 150 years and are clearly stated in numerous treaties.

I notice that this involves a relatively low level of sophistication, since Arkin is thinking of situations where there are no civilians in the area to complicate things. Even if his software is effective, it's a long way from software that will enable an "autonomous" fighter bot to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants in the sorts of unconventional wars that are likely to be typical in the twenty-first century.

Killer robots in war: What do you think?

This thought experiment is not as far-fetched as it may seem at first glance. Many experts believe that we will be able, not too many decades down the track, to build a device with the capacities that I'll be describing. My Generation Y philosophy/international studies students may still be young enough to be involved in real-world decisions when this sort of technology is available. Even I may still be alive, to vote on it, if it's an election issue in 30 or 40 years time. Though it may be at an early stage, the necessary research is going on, even now, in such places as the US military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Imagine that the T-1001 is a robotic fighting device with no need for a human being in the decision-making loop. Note that it does not possess any sentience, in the sense of consciousness or ability to suffer. It cannot reflect on or change the fundamental values that have been programmed into it. However, it is programmed to make independent decisions in the field; in that sense, it can operate autonomously, though it would not qualify as an entity with full moral autonomy in a sense that Kant, for example, might recognise. It has some limited ability to learn from experience and upgrade its programming.

The T-1001 is programmed to act within the traditional jus in bello rules of just war theory and/or similar rules existing in international law and military procedures manuals. Those rules include discriminating between combatants and non-combatants. I.e., civilians, and other non-combatants such as prisoners of war, have an immunity from attack; however, there is some allowance for "collateral damage", relying on modern versions of the (admittedly dubious) doctrine of double effect. The T-1001 is not equipped with weapons that are considered evil in themselves (because they are indiscriminate or cruel). Its programming requires it to avoid all harms that are disproportionate to the reasonably expected military gains.

To accomplish all this, the T-1001's designers have given it sophisticated pattern-recognition software and an expert program that makes decisions about whether or not to attack. It can distinguish effectively between combatants and non-combatants in an extensive range of seemingly ambiguous situations. It can weigh up military objectives against probable consequences, and is programmed to make decisions within the constraints of jus in bello (or similar requirements). As mentioned above, it does not use weapons that are evil in themselves, and does not attack non-combatants except strictly in accordance with an elaborate version of the doctrine of double effect that is meant to take account of concerns about collateral loss of life. It also uses a general rule of proportionality. Indeed, the T-1001's calculations, when it judges proportionality issues, consistently lead to more conservative decisions than those made by soldiers. I.e., its decisions are more conservative in the sense that it kills fewer civilians, causes less overall death and destruction, and produces less suffering than would be caused by human soldiers making the same sorts of decisions in comparable circumstances.

At the same time, it is an extremely effective combatant - faster, more accurate, and more robust than any human being. With declining birthrates in Western countries, and a shortage of young enlistees, it is a very welcome addition to the military capacity of countries such as the US, UK, Australia, etc.

In short, the T-1001 is more effective than human soldiers when it comes to traditional combat responsibilities. It does more damage to legitimate military targets, but causes less innocent suffering/loss of life. Because of its superior pattern-recognition abilities, its immunity to psychological stress, and its perfect "understanding" of the terms of engagement required of it, the T-1001 is better than human in its conformity to the rules of war.

One day, however, despite all the precautions I've described, something goes wrong and a T-1001 massacres 100 innocent civilians in an isolated village within a Middle Eastern war zone. Who (or what) is responsible for the deaths? Do you need more information to decide?

Given the circumstances, was it morally acceptable to deploy the T-1001? Is it acceptable for organisations such as DARPA to develop such a device?

I discussed a version of this scenario with my students this week. It seemed that, with some misgivings, the majority favoured deploying the T-1001, but perhaps only if a human was in the decision-making loop at least for the purpose of shutting it down if, despite all, it started to make an obvious error that would be a war crime if done by a human soldier. Presumably this would mean an automatic shut-down if it lost contact with the human being in the loop, such as by destruction of its cameras or its signal to base.

Although the scenario postulates that the T-1001 is actually less likely to commit war crimes (or the equivalent) than a human soldier, we can't guarantee that it will never confront a situation that confuses it. It wouldn't be nice if something like this started to run amok. Still, soldiers or groups of soldiers can also go crazy; in fact they are more likely to. Remember My Lai. But does a moral problem arise over the fact that, unless there's somehow a human being in the loop, any unjustified civilian deaths that it causes are unlike other deaths in war? It seems to hard to call them "accidental", but nor can they easily be sheeted home as any individual's responsibility. Is it implicit in our whole concept of jus in bello that that kind of situation must not be allowed to eventuate?

What would you do if offered the chance to deploy this military gadget on the battlefield? Assume that you are fighting a just war.

BCA v. Singh: Worrying libel ruling in British case

In the defamation case brought by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) against science writer Simon Singh, the supposedly defamatory words are contained in this passage:

"The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments."

The passage goes on:

"I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions"

On 7 May 2009, the English High Court made a ruling that this was not comment but a factual claim, and that the phrase "happily promotes bogus treatments" imputed deliberate, conscious dishonesty to the BCA.

One might have thought that the relevant paragraph would be looked upon as a fair comment on a matter of public interest and that the case would ultimately be dismissed unceremoniously. Whether or not the treatments are "bogus" is surely a controversial matter, but one for which there is considerable scientific support. At the very least, it is a matter on which a writer should be able to express an honest and reasonable opinion. The context shows that Singh elaborated the meaning of "bogus" to be something like "ineffective" or "unevidenced by scientific investigation". Well, that's probably true, and it's certainly a matter on which opinions should be expressed publicly.

Does the BCA promote these treatments "happily"? Well, assuming that they do promote them (which is not, as far as I know, denied by anyone), is there any evidence that they promote them reluctantly or with misgivings? If anything is being asserted as a fact here, it is that the BCA freely and without reluctance promotes treatments that are, in the honest and reasonable opinion of the journalist, ineffective for the purpose and/or lacking scientific support. The BCA shouldn't even have a case.

Instead, Singh is screwed. It is doubtful that even he believes that the BCA is engaging in conscious, deliberate dishonesty. More likely, he believes that its officers and membership are self-deceived, and that they are, accordingly, engaging without reluctance in the dangerous practice of promoting ineffective treatments to the public. However, it's unlikely that he would win an appeal on a point such as this. Nor would he have much chance of defending the truth of the meaning that has been imputed to his words.

Here is a good example of defamation law being used to suppress valuable speech. Although it's a British case, and the courts in the UK are notorious for favouring plaintiffs in defamation cases, a similar ruling is possible in other jurisidictions (except, no doubt, in the US, where freedom of speech is taken seriously). Of course, Singh could have worded every phrase with utmost care so that no possible defamatory interpretation could be placed on it. That would produce very leaden prose.

When defamation law functions in this way, it chills speech that is in the public interest. This case shows why defamation law must be kept under control. It should be reserved for clear cases of damage to the reputation of an individual that could lead to that individual being widely pilloried and shunned. It should not relate to legitimate expression of opinion, but to unambiguous allegations of fact that, if widely disseminated, would destroy someone as a social being. "Russell Blackford is a [insert appropriate horrific allegation that would destroy my reputation, such as one of pedophilia, or of criminal convictions for dishonesty or violence, or whatever]" should be considered defamatory, and I should be able to sue anyone who makes such a claim. "Such and such an organisation of alternative therapists is happily promoting bogus therapies," should not be.

Defamation law should be looked upon as a narrow, but still potentially dangerous, exception to the rule of free speech. It is a necessary evil that should be confined as closely as possible without destroying its efficacy in the limited class of circumstances where we really do need it. If it can produce a result like this, in the UK or elsewhere, it needs thorough revision.

Massimo Pigliucci batters Stanley Fish

These three detailed posts over the past couple of years, all by Massimo Pigliucci, are well worth reading.

Elsewhere, Pigliucci has been critical of the "New Atheist" arguments of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. In these posts, however, he is as sharply critical of Fish and the latter's slippery defence of religion - based on a form of epistemic relativism or epistemological scepticism - as you could ask for from any of the "New Atheists".

Some more Fish to fry

For those who haven't caught up, Stanley Fish has some more of his friendly God-talk, over on his New York Times blog.

Brian Leiter has a scathing response, followed up by an interesting discussion thread.

The gist of Fish's argument is that all knowledge claims must start somewhere, e.g. with assumptions about what counts as evidence, what counts as logically cogent argument, and so on. Hence, there is a sense in which all claims to knowledge are ultimately grounded in something that we might as well call "faith". Therefore, scientific claims such as the claim that the Earth revolves around the Sun are ultimately no better grounded than, say, typical evangelical Christian claims, such as the claim that, by his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection, Jesus of Nazareth atoned for our sins and broke the hold of sin and death over us. Both categories of claim rely on faith sooner or later, or so Fish wants us to think. Neither is epistemically superior to the other.

It is, of course, true that the grounding of any knowledge claim will eventually run out. If somebody does not accept our basic assumptions about what forms of argument are cogent and what counts as evidence, we can not convince her of anything that she does not want to be convinced of. For that reason, it's true to say that there is no argument about anything that is effective in persuading all comers, no matter how fanatical or even insane.

You can, of course, demonstrate the havoc that ensues if you violate ordinary logic by embracing a contradiction, such as "P & ~P". But even the demonstration will require reliance on some basic logical rules. Someone who is prepared to embrace a contradiction probably won't mind denying these, and in any event may not care if they are committed to accepting any proposition at all.

It's easy enough to demonstrate this, by the way. Assume any proposition you like, "Q", which might, for example, mean "Stanley Fish is the Great Beast of Revelation". Let's assume "P & ~P" and try to derive this directly by using some logical moves that are pretty standard.

1. P & ~P (assumed)
2. P (from 1. by & Elimination)
3. P v Q (from 2. by v Introduction)
4. ~P (from 1. by & Elimination)
5. Q (from 3. and 4. by Disjunctive Syllogism)

If your pet logical system doesn't have Disjunctive Syllogism as a fundamental rule, this might take a bit longer, but no plausible system of first-order logic fails to provide for Disjunctive Syllogism somehow. So you get the idea. I've just demonstrated that if any contradiction is true then Stanley Fish is the Great Beast of Revelation.

As I said, that might not worry someone who is not worried about accepting a contradiction in the first place. Still ...such a person must also either abandon some very basic rules of reasoning and accept that (as well as being the Great Beast of Revelation) Stanley Fish is the very same Great Fish that swallowed Jonah, not to mention that fact that he is one of the evil spirits cast into the Gadarene swine. And he's also the bottle of cough mixture that I've just been sipping from to try to loosen up some congestion in my lungs.

Likewise, chaos arises if I reason poorly about empirical matters. Suppose I often find that I bump into walls when I attempt to walk through them. In fact, it turns out that every time I've tried to walk through a wall (let's say I've attempted this 473 times), I've failed, and instead bumped into it. I now reason along the following lines: "I've failed 473 times in a row in my attempts to walk through walls. That's suggests I'm now long overdue for success; it's evidence that I'll succeed on my next attempt. I'll now walk through the wall that's directly ahead of me." Don't try that at home, folks.

Of course, someone who reasons like that can hang on stubbornly to their approach, with each failure providing stronger evidence that the next attempt will succeed. If someone is sufficiently stubborn, she will always be convinced that the evidence favours success on the next attempt.

But, while our various chains of inference cannot be justified all the way down to all comers, it does not follow that none are better than others. Chains of inference don't need to be justified all the way down. In fact, the very idea is incoherent. But some can be justified down into claims that no sane person would deny.

In fact, that's more typical than not of honest truth claims made in daily life. Scientific claims often move beyond what we can observe directly and involve things that are very small, or very far away, or no longer exist (but have left traces). In some cases, however, they are supported by consilient chains of inference that are strong at each step and that ultimately rely on claims that no sane person denies. Accordingly, science is often able to make real progress. Scientific investigations can converge on very robust propositions that are acceded to by properly trained people from many different personal and cultural backgrounds. Science's methods are continuous with the ordinary methods of reasoning that we use in day to day life, but made more rigorous in various well-known ways, to make up for the ubiquity of circumstantial evidence and heavily theory-laden reasoning.

Religion is simply not in this position. When we say that it relies on faith, we don't just mean that it eventually depends on assumptions about what counts as evidence and what counts as cogent reasoning - assumptions that can't be proved without relying upon them, because they count as our standards for what can be proved or evidenced. One problem is that religious statements are often in contradiction to statements that can be justified as far as it reasonable to try to justify anything. For example, the claim by Christian fundamentalists that the Earth is 6,000 to 10,000 years old contradicts the well-evidenced scientific finding that the Earth is well over 4 billion years old. It's true that the latter can't be justified all the way down - not in the incoherent sense that the most basic assumptions about evidence and logic on which the claim rests can themselves be justified in a non-circular way. But, in any coherent sense that you wish to specify, the claim is justified and the Christian fundamentalist claim is unjustified.

Similarly, the claim that the Nazis killed 5 to 6 million Jews during the Holocaust perpetrated in the World War Two years is justified in any coherent sense that you wish to specify. Claims to the contrary by Holocaust deniers are not justified. They are false.

In other cases, religious claims may not formally contradict other claims that are well-justified by evidence and cogent reasoning; it is just that they are not justified by our normal standards of what counts as justification. There is no good reason why someone who does not already believe these claims should do so. They are believed on the basis of socialisation or emotional experience, or wishful thinking, or some such thing, but not on the basis of evidence. A person who does believe these claims can be given good reason to doubt them, but she can continue to believe by relying on an inner feeling of calm or something similar. It is not just that these claims can't (incoherently) be justified all the way down. They can't even be justified as far down as is necessary for them to be well-evidenced. If our ordinary standards of evidence and reasoning were applied, then they would be assessed as probably false.

These distinctions are not all that difficult to make. It is easy to establish that some claims are better evidenced than others, by ordinary standards that all sane people accept, or by the use of reasoning and investigative techniques that are continuous with those standards. It's true that we can't justify our ultimate standards of justification themselves - to demand that we do so is incoherent. However, it's also true that some claims are well-supported by evidence, as assessed by standards of evidence that it is perfectly rational to acknowledge and that no sane person fails to apply in day to day life. Other claims, notably religious ones, well ... not so much.

Some light relief: Jenny and Russell at the Eurovision party the other night

Hospitality by Sarah Endacott and Jamie Reuel. Photography by Cat Sparks.

Peter Tatchell arrested at gay pride march in Moscow

At the very time that Moscow was the centre of the world's attention, with the silly but amusing Eurovision Song Contest, it managed to tarnish its image by banning a gay pride march, then arresting the 30 or so individuals who decided to demonstrate anyway, at a different location. Among those individuals was prominent Australian/British activist Peter Tatchell, who is perhaps most celebrated for his past attempts to make citizens' arrests of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe. (As previously announced, he is also a contributor to 50 Voices of Disbelief.)

From all reports, the Moscow police used roughhouse tactics in arresting a group of peaceful, non-resisting demonstrators, while the mayor of the city has denounced the demonstrators as "Satanists" and purveyors of "moral degradation". Prior to the event, he rebuffed all attempts to meet with representatives of the marchers and try to achieve some kind of accommodation with them.

It's nice to know how far Russia has come towards being a liberal democracy since the collapse of the USSR and the system of totalitarian communism. Seriously, what were they thinking? This is making headlines all over the world, making Russia look like it's still a grim dictatorship, run by a political class of hard-nosed thugs with a fine taste for police brutality. The political thugs concerned went of their way to make this ugly incident happen on the very day when Russia was trying to present itself as a modern, sophisticated, fun-loving, place, fully integrated into Europe.

According to this story, Tatchell was subsequently released without charge. It seems, however, from current reports that the local participants in the march are not being treated so lightly.

But perhaps the most shocking thing about this is not the moralistic and authoritarian attitude of the Moscow mayor and police. Let's face it, we already knew that Russia has a long way to go before we can welcome it to the twenty-first century, notwithstanding its (thin) democratic and liberal facade. No, I am even more disgusted by some of the comments we've been treated to by anonymous, apparently British, readers at The Independent's site. The UK is supposed to be a modern, liberal, secular nation, but you wouldn't think it to see the hateful sentences scribed by "borderreiver1", "fastrob", and others. Have a look for yourself. Fortunately, quite a few readers display a different viewpoint, but the bigoted comments from these anonymous cowards can make you despair. Tatchell puts his body on the line for his causes, when that's what it means to stand up to authority in the name of human rights, and he's worth more than the whole damn pack of them.

There's not a lot we can do, perhaps. We don't all have money, resources, or access to the media - or the admirable courage of somebody like Peter Tatchell, who was hurt seriously last time something like this happened in Russia. But we can at least exercise our freedom of speech in small ways. By commenting about this on our blogs, for example.

Do what you can today to support gay rights.

Living in the Past

Speaking of Jenny, as we were doing, check out her new blog, Living in the Past, where she discusses books, cats, etymology, recipes, ancient history ... and generally an eclectic range of subjects where she possesses frightening-but-entertaining erudition.

Jenny at Emerging Writers Festival

There's a good story in The Age today about the Emerging Writers Festival, which commences this coming Friday.

Jenny will be interviewed at a festival gig on Thursday evening, 28 May, particularly in relation to The Priestess and the Slave.

The Statute of Liberty - Chapter 8 and Epilogue

Okay, Robertson really gets to the point in Chapter 8 (and the brief, reflective, Epilogue). He lays out his entire proposal for a charter of rights, explaining his rationale at each step.

I must say that his drafting is elegant and as clear as anyone could expect with such a difficult task. It lives up to his reputation as an outstanding legal scholar and practising lawyer. Perhaps some of this material can be used in whatever instrument might ultimately emerge from the current human rights consultation process. This material alone would make the book worthwhile.

But do I agree with it? No. First, he tries to write what amounts to a constitutional preamble, even though there is no intention of including it in the constitution at this stage (but Robertson clearly hopes that the charter he imagines will one day be given constitutional force). His preamble is as well-written as might be expected, but any attempt to lay out values comprehensively in a preamble is doomed to failure for the simple reason that we live in a pluralistic society. Any statement of common values has to be quite minimal or it will exclude some people who don't share some of the values it contains. I think that trying to draft a document like this is a futile exercise, no matter how skilled the author may be.

Second, the content is far broader than that contained in similar charters (those of the UK, Canada, the ACT, and Victoria) and vastly broader than the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution. It gives the impression that Robertson wants to use the document to push his entire political agenda, but that should not be what the exercise is about. To be sure, he does make some attempt to avoid the inclusion of positive rights giving licence to the courts to make funding decisions and to control the detail of government policy on such things as health and education, but he still ends up with something more like a party platform than a charter of rights.

The trouble with positive rights isn't that we shouldn't have them. I do want legislation to provide for a range of rights to health, education, workplace standards, and much else. However, once you start setting out people's legal rights to government resources, including the use of resources to control other people's behaviour (as with anti-discrimination law), you soon find that there are complex questions that can only be resolved by complex drafting. This drafting needs to be open to amendment from time to time, in order to deal with problems or anomalies that arise, to alter standards as needed, and to balance the various interests involved. Getting the detail right is inevitably a matter for day-to-day politics. You can't resolve it all in advance in the concise words of a charter of rights. International conventions can give broad guidance, but fully fleshed-out legislation is then needed to get the details right in domestic law.

Negative rights against the state are different. Of course, some difficulties arise, but nonetheless we can concentrate on codifying the boundaries of the state's power, without getting involved with the complex issues of exactly how the state should use its power, within those boundaries. There is already a vast body of legislation that deals with the positive claims of the citizens of the citizens on the state (e.g. social security law, health law, education law), but what is missing is an adequate statement of what the state can't do. What negative demands do we make against the state to keep out of our lives? What aspects of our lives, here in Australia, are out of bounds to the legislature and the executive?

That is a difficult enough set of questions, but greatly less difficult than the issue of how state resources should be used, which requires many volumes of legislation. Let's concentrate on the real gap, and on what a bill or charter of rights can do fairly easily.

Even here, note that the absolute legal limits to what the state can do will not exhaust all issues of what it should do. It's one thing to expect the state to honour freedom of speech and to write this into a constitutional document. It's another to expect it to honour something like the Millian harm principle. We should not try to write that principle into a constitutional document but we should still invoke it in political debate.

The point here is that a charter of rights does not contain every principle that should restrain government action, but only those limits that are very widely agreed, readily justiciable, and have few plausible exceptions. In fact, there's a danger that the more comprehensive we make a charter (and a possible preamble), the less we will look credible if we rely on principles that are not contained there. If we really must have a preamble, as Robertson claims, we somehow need to refer to the Millian harm principle: the important principle that the government will not criminalise our actions unless they lead to direct, significant, secular, and wrongful forms of harm to others. Note, though, that even this statement of the principle shows how difficult it might be to draft it in a form that could be widely agreed in the Australian community.

In the end, Robertson's book contains much useful material, including some effective refutation of arguments against a charter of rights. However, it tries to do too much. It's as if he, and some other advocates of a charter of rights, can't resist the opportunity to pursue a very broad political agenda through the exercise of designing a charter. That, however, is too divisive and too cumbersome. We'd be better off, and more likely to get something useful out of the reflection currently going on in Australia, if we narrowed our ambition to something narrower and more practical.

I've made suggestions in my submission to the Human Rights Consultation, but there are other models. The possibilities open up if the problem of the unconstitutionality of advisory opinions can be overcome, though Robertson doesn't offer much to deal with this, and it would be risky to go ahead with a model that will be very expensive - only to have it struck down as unconstitutional.

If that problem can be overcome, I could live with the provisions of the ACT charter, which is relatively narrow in what it seeks to achieve, relatively concise, and not hacked around (like the Victorian charter) with too many qualifying words to negate its protections. But over-enthusiastic supporters of a charter may spoil the possibility of an outcome like that if they continue to pursue every issue that's on their minds, rather than concentrating on the realm of practicalities.