Comment by jashkenas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jashkenas | Hacker News Reader

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Hi Chris!

(Apologies if it's putting you too much on the spot, but I'm actually curious in hearing about this...)

My question for you is how you personally navigate the ethical issues that are raised by today's news about Google working with the U.S. military to help classify imagery from drone footage. (1) (2)

In your tweet about this paper, you write:

It qualitatively changes the questions we can ask. One basic example:

neuron 426 fired ~= useless

[floppy ear] fired = very interesting!

But one can just as easily imagine:

neuron 183 fired ~= useless

[young man fleeing] fired = very interesting!

Are there conversations within Google Brain about the appropriate applications of this research you can share with us? Do you feel like this class of military technology is going to be developed one way or the other, so there's no use in worrying about speeding it along?

1: https://gizmodo.com/google-is-helping-the-pentagon-build-ai-...

2: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/06/google-is-quietly-provid...

Hi Jash!

I focus my work on technical research directions I believe increase the probability of advances in AI being outstanding for all of humanity. I'm fortunate that Google provides me resources to do so, with broad autonomy to work on what I think is important.

My main focus is on building techniques that allow humans to understand how neural networks make decisions, because I think that will be a powerful tool in making sure increasingly automated systems are aligned with society's values -- for example, being fair -- and are making decisions for reasons we endorse. I also spend a lot of time thinking about accident risk and safety. I believe this work is robustly good for the world.

Of course, lots of concerns about AI can't be addressed by the kind of technical research I work on. I think technical research into interpretability, robustness, safety, fairness, etc... is necessary but not sufficient for the kind of world we want to see. There are also tough questions of public policy, international governance, and scientific ethics -- such as issues around the abuse of AI systems. On these kind of issues, I'd largely defer to people who think deeply about these topics, like Allan Dafoe (Oxford), Michael Page (OpenAI), and Tim Hwang (Ethics & Governance of AI Fund).

Thanks for the answer – I really appreciate it.

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