A few weeks ago, The Guardian, a British newspaper, published a story about a chatbot program that declared its love for a user, told him to leave his wife, and be with it. The chatbot said, 'Actually, you're not happily married. Your spouse and you don't love each other. You just had a boring Valentine's Day dinner together.' For those of you not familiar with a chatbot, it is computer software that uses artificial intelligence to have a conversation with its users that mimics, to some degree, a conversation with another human being.
Chatbots have been used to provide psychological support to people experiencing mild to moderate psychological problems. Luckily, the chatbot in the story above was only available to a limited number of users as it was on trial before being released to the public.
This incident reminded me of the discussion about the ethics of using AI in our lives and whether what we have seen in Hollywood movies about AI taking over and controlling humans could come true.
You probably remember the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” which introduced the first AI program called HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) who controls the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft and interacts with the ship's astronaut crew but then turned evil and attempted to kill them all. This was then a fictional movie but since then, artificial intelligence has advanced to perform many complicated tasks, from face recognition programs that help you unlock your smartphone by simply looking at the camera to assisting in surgical procedures and driving cars and drones, working in factories, and home assistance. However, the question remains: is AI good or evil? In my opinion, there is no simple answer to this question as AI is not a living entity and cannot think for itself. So, it all depends on the programming algorithms behind its actions.
Let us take a simple ethical dilemma. Imagine a self-driving car drives at high speed through a narrow lane where children are playing on the street. The car has two options: either it avoids the children and drives into a wall, probably killing the human passenger, or it continues its path and brakes, but probably too late to save the life of the children. What would the car do? How should the car be programmed? Who should be responsible if a mistake occurs? When asked how to solve the above situation, the car manufacturers answered that the car would be programmed to save the passenger who paid for the service.
This honest and expected answer shortened the debate, only to raise a second ethical question about social equity and whether the rich who pay for AI have the upper hand when it comes to choices made by smart machines.
The discussion about AI ethics will go on as innovations in this field are likely to expand. So, let us keep an open yet critical mind and be a part of the conversation.”
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