Moral Programming: Crafting a flexible heuristic moral meta-model for meaningful AI control in pluralistic societies

Artificial Intelligence (AI) permeates more and more application domains. Its progress regarding scale, speed, and scope magnifies potential societal benefits but also ethically and safety relevant risks. Hence, it becomes vital to seek a meaningful control of present-day AI systems (i.e. tools). For this purpose, one can aim at counterbalancing the increasing problem-solving ability of AI with boundary conditions core to human morality. However, a major problem is that morality exists in a context-sensitive steadily shifting explanatory sphere co-created by humans using natural language – which is inherently ambiguous at multiple levels and neither machine-understandable nor machine-readable. A related problem is what we call epistemic dizziness, a phenomenon linked to the inevitable circumstance that one could always be wrong. Yet, while universal doubt cannot be eliminated from morality, it need not be magnified if the potential/requirement for steady refinements is anticipated by design. Thereby, morality pertains to the set of norms and values enacted at the level of a society, other not nearer specified collectives of persons, or at the level of an individual. Norms are instrumental in attaining the fulfilment of values, the latter being an umbrella term for all that seems decisive for distinctions between right and wrong – a central object of study in ethics. In short, for a meaningful control of AI against the background of the changing contextsensitive and linguistically moulded nature of human morality, it is helpful to craft descriptive and thus sufficiently flexible AI-readable heuristic models of morality. In this way, the problem-solving ability of AI could be efficiently funnelled through these updatable models so as to ideally boost the benefits and mitigate the risks at the AI deployment stage with the conceivable side-effect of improving human moral conjectures. For this purpose, we introduced a novel transdisciplinary framework denoted augmented utilitarianism (AU) (Aliman and Kester, 2019b), which is formulated from a meta-ethical stance. AU attempts to support the human-centred task to harness human norms and values to explicitly and traceably steer AI before humans themselves get unwittingly and unintelligibly steered by the obscurity of AI’s deployment. Importantly, AU is descriptive, non-normative, and explanatory (Aliman, 2020), and is not to be confused with normative utilitarianism. (While normative ethics pertains to ‘what one ought to do’, descriptive ethics relates to empirical studies on human ethical decision-making.) This chapter offers the reader a compact overview of how AU coalesces elements from AI, moral psychology, cognitive and affective science, mathematics, systems engineering, cybernetics, and epistemology to craft a generic scaffold able to heuristically encode given moral frameworks in a machine-readable form. We thematise novel insights and also caveats linked to advanced AI risks yielding incentives for future work

Transdisciplinary AI Observatory -- Retrospective Analyses and Future-Oriented Contradistinctions

In the last years, AI safety gained international recognition in the light of heterogeneous safety-critical and ethical issues that risk overshadowing the broad beneficial impacts of AI. In this context, the implementation of AI observatory endeavors represents one key research direction. This paper motivates the need for an inherently transdisciplinary AI observatory approach integrating diverse retrospective and counterfactual views. We delineate aims and limitations while providing hands-on-advice utilizing concrete practical examples. Distinguishing between unintentionally and intentionally triggered AI risks with diverse socio-psycho-technological impacts, we exemplify a retrospective descriptive analysis followed by a retrospective counterfactual risk analysis. Building on these AI observatory tools, we present near-term transdisciplinary guidelines for AI safety. As further contribution, we discuss differentiated and tailored long-term directions through the lens of two disparate modern AI safety paradigms. For simplicity, we refer to these two different paradigms with the terms artificial stupidity (AS) and eternal creativity (EC) respectively. While both AS and EC acknowledge the need for a hybrid cognitive-affective approach to AI safety and overlap with regard to many short-term considerations, they differ fundamentally in the nature of multiple envisaged long-term solution patterns. By compiling relevant underlying contradistinctions, we aim to provide future-oriented incentives for constructive dialectics in practical and theoretical AI safety research

On Controllability of Artificial Intelligence

Invention of artificial general intelligence is predicted to cause a shift in the trajectory of human civilization. In order to reap the benefits and avoid pitfalls of such powerful technology it is important to be able to control it. However, possibility of controlling artificial general intelligence and its more advanced version, superintelligence, has not been formally established. In this paper, we present arguments as well as supporting evidence from multiple domains indicating that advanced AI can’t be fully controlled. Consequences of uncontrollability of AI are discussed with respect to future of humanity and research on AI, and AI safety and security. This paper can serve as a comprehensive reference for the topic of uncontrollability

Open reWall: Survey-to-production workflow for building renovation

A reabilitação de espaços interiores, num contexto de personalização em série, requer uma mudança na forma como os sistemas construtivos são desenhados, construídos e reutilizados. Recorrendo a plataformas digitais para a participação os arquitetos, em colaboração com outros atores na indústria AEC, podem desenvolver e oferecer soluções personalizadas e desmontáveis a utilizadores genéricos. Esta investigação propõe o uso de sistemas de construção personalizada em série (CPS) para fornecer sistemas de divisórias desmontáveis fabricadas digitalmente usando metodologias do levantamento à produção ligadas a configuradores online, em que os utilizadores co-projetam soluções para a reabilitação de espaços interiores. A metodologia de investigação socorre-se de pesquisa e análise teórica para definir critérios e objetivos a serem explorados em resolução de problemas de projeto. A partir destas experiências são sintetizados princípios e uma metodologia para a conceção de sistemas CPS de sistemas de divisórias personalizáveis e desmontáveis para a reabilitação. A metodologia clarifica os papeis dos atores, passos, e arquitetura do sistema para implementar um sistema CPS do levantamento à produção. A investigação demonstra que a metodologia de levantamento proposta é utilizável por utilizadores especialistas e não-especialistas, com os últimos a apresentarem em média melhores resultados, e que estes levantamentos têm precisão suficiente para processos do desenho à produção. Também se demonstra que a metodologia do levantamento à produção, a gramática genérica, e os critérios são úteis para os arquitetos conceberem sistemas de divisórias desmontáveis e personalizáveis para sistemas CPS abertos.Building renovation of interior spaces, in the context of mass customization, requires a shift in how construction systems are designed, built, and reused. Leveraging digital frameworks for user participation, architects in collaboration with other stakeholders in the AEC industry may design anddeliver customized and disassemble-able solutions to generic end-users. The research proposes mass customization construction (MCC) systems can deliver cost-effective digitally fabricated and disassemble-able construction systems using survey-to-production workflows deployed in web configurators for end-users to co-design solutions in building renovation. The research methodology uses theoretical inquiry and analysis to define criteria and objectives to be explored in design problem solving. From these experiments generalizable principles and a lowkey workflow for the design of MCC systems of customizable and disassemble-able partition wall construction systems for open building renovation are synthetized. The workflow clarifies stakeholder roles, steps, and system architecture to implement an MCC system from survey to production. This investigation demonstrates the proposed survey workflow is usable by non-expert and expert instance-designers, with the former having on-average better results, and that these can survey spaces with sufficient precision for design-to-production workflows. It is also shown the survey-to-production workflow, the generic grammar, and criteria are useful for architects to design customizable and disassemble-able partition wall systems for open MCC systems

UTB/TSC Undergraduate Catalog 2002-2004

https://scholarworks.utrgv.edu/brownsvillelegacycatalogs/1035/thumbnail.jp

UTB/TSC Undergraduate Catalog 1999-2001

https://scholarworks.utrgv.edu/brownsvillelegacycatalogs/1005/thumbnail.jp

Home environment and reading attainment: a study of children in a working class community

The relationship between a number of home\ud background factors and reading ability was studied in\ud three samples (Ns of 63, 100 and 104) of working class\ud children aged 7-8, using standardised tests given to the\ud children, and parental interviews. Home variables studied\ud included the reading model provided by the mother, her\ud educational aspirations, her language behaviour, the help\ud she gave with reading at home, the disciplinary methods\ud she employed, and the extent to which she supervised and\ud participated in her child's out-of-school activities. The\ud home background factor which emerged as most strongly\ud related to reading achievement was whether or not the\ud mother regularly heard the child read ('coached'). Most\ud of the other significant relationships found between\ud reading ability and parental practices could be accounted\ud for by the fact that parents who displayed attitudes and\ud practices which appeared to favour the development of\ud reading ability in their children were also more likely\ud to have the habit of hearing the child read. For example,\ud controlling for coaching markedly reduced the correlation\ud between maternal language behaviour (as assessed using\ud scales devised by Bernstein's team) and reading performance:\ud conversely, controlling for maternal language behaviour had\ud little effect on the association between coaching and\ud reading performance. WISC IQ scores were obtained on one of\ud the samples (N = 100) and it was established that IQ\ud differences did not account for the superior reading\ud performance of the coached children. When the amount of\ud coaching which the children had received was related to\ud reading test score, a highly significant positive association\ud was found. The lack of attention paid in the past to\ud parental involvement in children's school work is commented\ud upon in discussion of the theoretical and practical\ud implications of the study findings