The Core

It turns out that computers are very good at playing games like chess, I think an example of a real turning point is when a self driving car will be able to win a race filled with professional race car drivers -- not just navigate a track at faster speeds, but do so with other cars on the track and other random variables.

>there is no third type of skill

...There is a pretty good swathe of humanity that didn't make the second cut.  We're grappling with that now, yet we're *still* worried about declining birth rates.

On topic and touches on my point above:
Tennessee Ernie Ford - "Sixteen Tons"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfu2A0ezq0

That is the kernel of it.

Essentially that is the question that Yuval Harari is grappling with in part in the article that prompted this reflection: if everything humans can do that is of economic value can be done better by machines, how do we evaluate the worth of humanity?

Ultimately, that gets back to basic questions around a UBI or, for that matter, socialism, right?

I understand your question is far broader, but a subset or special case of your question might be: how do you distribute goods and services in a society where people no longer earn wages?

You could argue that wages are a terrible way to decide who gets what. Why should a single Silicon Valley Googler be given 50x as much to consume as a single mom with four kids who works at Wal-Mart?

I think the problem we've always faced is what other method works?

And to your point, as wage labor starts to disappear (assuming that's true), we're going to need to figure that out.

Or, more generally, we may need to figure out whether we want to always create new jobs so we can keep consuming more, or should we consume less, let machines do more of the work, and we all just work a lot less? And if we choose that route, again, what is a viable method for distributing the fruits of that production?

>3rd type of skill

Well there's no sign of computers having a code of morals yet, but pretty much those other two are things they'll just get better at, at least from the computational and problem solving angle. So we have morals on our side... err... well we could claim to or at least individuals amongst the race. No doubt given enough time there'll be algorithms to simulate a human-like moral code or advances in psychology will explain the landscape of the underlying motivations.

VR will at least keep some occupied. For me, I'd just want to avoid the can't beat em join em approach and start using tech to 'improve' our bodies.

I suppose there can be a feeling of existential crisis if machines can outdo all our greatest achievements...

>>Which is not that unlike what many Europeans said of "savages" during the Age of Exploration and what some apologists for slavery said as well. The moral superiority argument is historically one of the last arguments that you pull out when your other arguments start to fail.

Bit of a stretch there I think. I don't think there's a moral equivalence there. AI and human history seem quite separate, and there's no splendid isolation end game.

>>Given the deep biases in humans and the many ways in which we can be manipulated, I wonder how long it will be until there is a type of civil rights movement that demands the right to Trial by Algorithm, precisely to escape the miscarriages of justice we see in the courts based on bias.

Can't see it happening. It's by human consensus (the jury), and until there's massive leaps in neuroscience, can't see how we'd suddenly change to using algorithms instead. At least in the current system you have the moral agency of the people in the jury to validate that choice... the drawback is what information is privy to them at the time of the trial and how they choose to interpret it. I don't think we can really replace human conclusions with AI ones without justification behind it. Saying that, I'm sure AI wouldn't conclude anyone's a witch... given the right inputs.

I'm interested in how a computer could discern between the idea of free will and accountability. Bit of a minefield in itself.

>>I do think that in our lifetimes, we'll see mediocre genre fiction pumped out by AI.

Merely aesthetic value

:-) Busted!

Yeah, that was a bit overstated. I'm mostly thinking out loud here and throwing out ideas.

I don't mean that there is a moral equivalence between slavery and using AI. I just mean to say that most things that we asserted were uniquely human, we have found are either true of other animals or are envisionable for computers. I don't place much stock in the uniqueness, let alone the superiority, of humans. Humans as an aggregate are unique, of course. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to tell humans from other things. I just mean that I don't believe there is any one characteristic that is and always will be unique to humans.

Time and again, we find arguments based on human nature don't hold up well. Man the toolmaker.

Trial by algo is far-fetched, I'll grant that. But we already have a system where gathering evidence, researching precedent and informing the sentencing phase are commonly algorithmically-driven. Probably jury selection too. The only phases that are not using algos to my knowledge are the actual presentation of the evidence in court and the judgement of guilt or innocence.

At this point, I think the main thrust of civil liberties advocates is in limiting the use of algorithms, but is that because they are algorithms, or because they are bad algorithms?

I was listening to a military guy who was talking about AI in battlefield use and he said the thrust right now was in developing "explainable AI," because the consequences of hacking or algorithmic error is so high. The current AI is not explainable, that is it is not good at arguing how it came to its conclusion. Until it can do that, there are fears about embedding it too deeply in military systems (as well as pressure not to lose the AI race).

I imagine in the courtroom, any AI that would get involved in the judgement phase would need to be explainable AI, and we're not there yet. That, I think, might be more important than the quality of the judgement.

In any case, if algorithms were explainable, using algorithms to judge might not be so scary if you were, say, African-American or, as you say, accused of witchcraft. But it is sort of a Russian dolls problem. The AI perhaps explains its rationale, but like the humans who built it, it is blind to racial bias and does not include that in its explanation.

Very complicated, especially given that the racial bias of algorithms used in court is not at all theoretical:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2166207-discriminating-algorithms-5-times-ai-showed-prejudice/

Nor is the general problem of racist AI:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/24/microsoft-silences-its-new-a-i-bot-tay-after-twitter-users-teach-it-racism/

So, in point of fact, if you are an African-American, given the current algorithms like the COMPAS sentencing algo, you might not be so happy with algorithmic justice. But again, that's more because algorithms tend to mirror human bias.

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about all of the above. Like I say, it's mostly thinking in public to see what other people think.

And finally... a couple of fun quotes to leave you with that I found in a few minutes of poking around.

It has been opined that computers will not introduce the type of narrow jurisprudence that frightened scholars of the early twentieth century. The rationale for this opinion is that computers are versatile because they have "... forgetteries as effective as their memories, they may be more objective in thorough legal research than lawyers and judges who are blinded by their clients' hopes and their own or by the heat of a trial". The same author says that it must also be remembered that computers will never replace lawyers and judges in making the "... final and ultimate analyses, arguments, and decisions which require insight, understanding and evaluation of complex circumstances". The second industrial revolution, the principles of which are automation and computers, is upon us.

--
Michael Landes, Project: Automated Legal Research," American Bar Association Journal, vol. 52, p. 733 (August, 1966).
https://books.google.com/books?id=TlkTZz35Iz4C&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Thinking computers will be a new race, a sentient companion to our own. When a computer finally passes the Turing Test, will we have the right to turn it off? Who should get the prize money — the programmer or the computer? [note: he still assumes there will be a programmer] Can we say that such a machine is "self-aware"? Should we give it the right to vote? Should it pay taxes? If you doubt the significance of these issues, consider the possibility that someday soon you will have to argue them with a computer. If you refuse to  talk to a machine, you will be like the judges in Planet of the Apes who refused to allow the talking human to speak in court because, according to the religious dogma of the planet, humans were incapable of speech.

  -- Robert Epstein, "The Quest for a Thinking Computer," in Parsing the Turing Test (2009), p. 12; originally published in AI Magazine, 1992
https://books.google.com/books?id=AcXFfl1pPcgC&lpg=PR3&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q&f=false