|
A
peer-reviewed electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and ISSN
1541-0099 29(2) – November 2019 |
Machines
and Non-Identity Problems
Zachary Biondi
Department of Philosophy, UCLA
Journal of
Evolution and Technology - Vol. 29 Issue 2 – October 2019 – pgs 12–25
Abstract
A number of thinkers have been
wondering about the moral obligations humans have, or will have, to intelligent
technologies. An underlying assumption is that “moral machines” are decades in
the offing, and thus we have no pressing obligations now. But, in the context
of technology, we are yet to consider that we might owe moral consideration to
something that is not a member of the moral community but eventually will be as
an outcome of human action. Do we have current actual obligations to
technologies that do not currently exist? If there are obligations to currently
non-existing technologies, we must confront what might be called the
Non-Identical Machines Problem. Can we harm or benefit an entity by making it
one way rather than another? This paper presents the problem and argues that it
is more challenging than the standard Non-Identity Problem.
Introduction
For
philosophers, issues in artificial intelligence (AI) have historically been
situated in the philosophy of mind. A renewed interest is less in the
traditional question of whether artificial general intelligence is possible and
more in the ethical problems presented by practically capable technologies,
whether or not they are conscious. The concern falls out of the fact that we
are hurtling with ever increasing speed toward more and more powerful types of
technology.
A
number of scientists and scholars have also been wondering about the moral
obligations that humans might have to emergent technologies. If we develop an
artificial general intelligence, would it be possible to harm it? We usually assume
that items of technology that belong in the moral community (what we might call
moral machines) are decades in the
offing, and thus we have no obligations toward them now (Wallach and Allen
2009). One day, however, when they reach a certain level of sophistication, the
obligations will take effect.
I
worry that the discussion is ignoring a different obligation. If so, we risk a
different moral failure. I am interested in what I call the problem of creative responsibility: what
responsibilities does a creator have to its creation in the act of creating? To help draw out the contours of the
problem, I will relate it to the two more dominant themes within the ethics of
future technology that are mentioned above: 1) existential risk/safety; and 2)
the moral machine problem (Biondi 2018b).
The
second of these topics does not involve moral issues that precede the created
entity’s existence. It is about how we should categorize and behave toward
entities we find among us. The first, however, is about moral issues that we
face prior to the existence of the technologies in question. Yet the issues are about the technologies
only indirectly. The moral concern is the (types of) entities we find among us.
We
thus find conceptual space for a third topic: moral issues that we face prior
to the existence of the created entity and in which the focus of moral concern
is the created entity itself. The problem of creative responsibility is about
how we confront these issues. (There is also the meta(ethical) problem – which I
will not directly address here – of how to make the problem solvable, or even
intelligible, within canonical ethical theories.)
To
frame my discussion further, there are two ways to construe the problem of
creative responsibility:
1.
Narrow.
We can wonder about our responsibilities in cases in which we are creating an
entity that is owed moral concern. Here we are assuming that the entity in
question is a member of the moral community, or will be when it exists. There
is a further distinction to draw (note that a single case can have aspects of
both):
a.
“When” Choices.
These are situations in which the choices are about whether, when, or in what
environment to create an entity that is not itself the subject of creative
design choices. These problems have familiar literatures. Examples would be the
morality of having children (Benatar 2008) or breeding nonhuman animals.
b.
“How” Choices.
These are cases in which the moral entity is the subject of creative design
choices. How or in what manner the entity will exist (its nature, so to speak) is to be determined by the creator. The
problems here have been discussed with respect to genetic/neuro/moral
enhancement (Savulescu 2009), disability, and domestication. To illustrate,
Yahweh in the Book of Genesis faced “how” choices of creative responsibility on
the fifth and sixth days of creation.
2.
Broad.
We can wonder about the ethics of creation generally: for example, the choice
to create or not create at all,
choices about the creation of environments, and the choice of whether to create
an entity with moral significance or one without. How should we conceive of our
eventual creations, knowing that the conceptions will guide our creative acts?
Yahweh faced this problem in the beginning, and each day after. The choice to
build an AI in the first place is a matter of broad creative responsibility,
and thus we must not beg any questions by assuming that not creating an AI is morally safe (though it likely is from the
perspective of narrow creative responsibility). The question of which machine
we should make is, or can be heard as, the broad
problem since many of the possible types of entities, we assume, would not be
entities owed moral concern. (See Plato’s Timaeus
29e-30c for a statement of the broad construal.)
As
best as I can, I will set the broad construal aside. However, assumptions about
broad creative responsibility necessarily lurk in the background of my
discussion (and any philosophical project qua
creation, in fact). My plan is to focus on issues of narrow creative responsibility. The narrow construal connects to
what Derek Parfit called the Non-Identity Problem (NIP) (see Parfit 1984, ch.
16, and Parfit 1976; Kavka 1982; Adams 1979; Schwartz 1978; Adams also circles
around the NIP in an earlier contribution (1972)). The “when” choices run into
the standard NIP: your choices can’t make a particular future individual better
or worse off because such choices change the identity of the individual in
question. “How” choices yield more challenging versions of the NIP. With my
focus on technology, we might coin the term Non-Identical
Machines Problem (NIMP): since design choices will affect which type of
machine exists, the choices are unable to make the machine better or worse off.
And, as an important complicating factor, we have already begun creating the
machines.
My
plan is to outline and explore the NIMP. I will compare it to other forms of
the NIP and, in doing so, attempt to uncover the intuitions which indicate that
it – and the problem of creative responsibility – is a genuine moral issue
worthy of serious attention. I will then discuss possible solutions to the
NIMP. This will involve illustrating the various ways in which the NIMP is more
formidable than the standard NIP.
It
is best to start, however, with the traditional NIP.
1. The Non-Identity Problem
1.1
Introducing the problem
The
NIP concerns our obligations to future people. More specifically, it usually
concerns obligations to future entities that are not themselves the product of human
design choices (see Parfit’s “14-Year-Old-Girl” case (1984, 358)). What do we
owe to human beings who do not yet exist?
Consider
an example. A country might face a choice: 1) commit to drastic conservation
measures specified in, say, a global climate accord; or 2) pull out of the accord
and allow fossil fuel corporations to do as they wish. Suppose that, on the
preservation option, the quality of life for those living 100 years in the
future would be substantially higher than on the laissez-faire alternative.
Relative to the other option, either choice would have a large impact on the
details of people’s lives now. They would meet different people and,
accordingly, have children with different people. As a result, current people
would have different children in the different futures: the people living 100
years after the country chooses conservation are different people from
those who would have lived if the country had abandoned the climate accord. So,
do we benefit the people living in the future conserved climate? No, because if
we had chosen differently, those people would not exist. Do we harm the people
living in the future hellish climate? No, because if we had chosen differently,
different people would exist.
This
is the NIP. The people in the two possible futures are non-identical. On the
“better” alternative, we do not benefit our progeny because they are not better
off than they would have been otherwise. On the “worse” alternative, we do harm
them because they are not worse off than they would have been. They simply
would not have been. Hence, in terms of the future people, it does not matter
morally which choice we make. A deeply counterintuitive conclusion!
The
NIP is an argument. Arguments have premises. Therefore, the NIP has premises.
Let us make explicit four of them. With one exception, each represents a
possible solution to the NIP: by rejecting the premise, one can avoid the
problem’s conclusion. As a corollary, this also illustrates that the NIP is a
problem faced by any moral theory so long as it maintains responsibilities to
future individuals – though, of course, what form the responsibilities take,
and what terms we would use to describe them, will vary by theory.1
1.2
Personal Identity
The
NIP relies on the idea that there would be different future people in the
different outcomes of our current choices. This is seen in Parfit’s
“Time-Dependence Claim,” which suggests that who a person is depends on when he
was conceived and who the parents are (Parfit 1984, 353).
Philosophers
tend not to attack the NIP by questioning this view of personal identity. Parfit
thinks that his claims are “easy to believe” and “not controversial” (Parfit
1984, 351). Nevertheless, to solve the problem through personal identity, we
would need to claim that the future people would be the same in the different
outcomes of our current choice. As a result, the current choice not to conserve
the environment harms people living 100 years from now because, even if we had
chosen differently, the same people
would exist and have better lives. We are in fact making particular people
worse off by our environmental negligence. Hence we are harming them. There is
no non-identity and thus no problem. All choices are what Parfit calls “same
people choices” (Parfit 1984, 356). (For a discussion of the different types of possible
future worlds, see Carter 2001. For the view that merely possible people are morally irrelevant see
Weinberg 2008.)
1.3 A life worth living
The
notion of a “life worth living” is meant to restrict the number of cases that
yield NIP puzzles. If, as a direct result of our current choices, a person in
the future has a life not worth living, it is intuitive to say that we wrong
the person. The wrong is established without claims about identity. We face the
NIP only when the person does have a
life worth living: they would not be better off not existing (because, by
hypothesis, their life is worth living) and they would not be better off if we
were to make different choices today (because then they would not exist). The
notion of a life worth living, then, serves as a qualification on the NIP: insofar as the future people have lives
worth living, how do we justify the idea that wrecking the environment
today will harm them? This is how Parfit presents the problem (1984, 358–59). Hanser’s
discussion helpfully schematizes the role that a life worth living has in the
argument (1990, 51,
59).
To
have a life worth living means that the life meets some threshold of moral or
existential acceptability, whatever that means. It is paradoxical because, as
Epicurus asked, what exactly does a person gain by not existing? But insofar as
the threshold is met, the NIP suggests that the unfortunate parts of the person’s
life cannot be called harms in the morally relevant sense. This is true because the
worthwhileness of life is taken to have a morally compensatory effect (see Weinberg
2008, 4).
Unlike
the other premises, rejecting the notion of a life worth living, or how it is
employed in the premise, does not amount to a response to the NIP. In fact,
since the notion serves to restrict NIP cases, rejecting it risks making the
NIP even more imposing. I bring up the notion of a life worth living because it
is central to the NIP and will enable us to think about the additional
challenges of the NIMP.
1.4 Worse off principle
Key
to the NIP is the idea that our current choices do not make future people worse off than they would have been if
we had chosen differently. Identifying harms involves comparing counterfactual states of affairs. (To see the worse off
principle in the original articulations of the NIP, see Kavka 1982, 95 and
Parfit 1984, 374.)
Attacking
the comparative theory of harm is the most common approach to solving the NIP.
If a non-comparative theory of harm is true and relevant for the cases that the
NIP trades on, the NIP dissolves. (Woollard (2012, 681–83) takes the view that
both types of theories are morally relevant. Parfit and Harman appear to take
this view as well (Harman 2004, 109n12).) Accordingly, those hoping to solve
the NIP through critiquing the worse off principle must show both that 1) there
is a plausible non-comparative theory of harm and 2) the theory enables us to
make sense of obligations to future generations. Parfit’s idea is that the
non-comparative sense of harm is not the morally relevant sense of harm in NIP
cases (1984, 369; cf. Woollard 2012, 685).
Shiffrin
(1999) sketches one prominent non-comparative theory. Harman (2004) offers
another. I will provide the details of the non-comparative theories in 2.4.
However, following Boonin (2008), whatever intuition-preserving power the
non-comparative theories might have, they yield counterintuitive consequences
of their own. If we are driven to non-comparative theories of harm out of a
desire to preserve intuitions, we are driven away from them for the same
reasons. The NIP literature can at times feel like philosophical whack-a-mole.
1.5 Person-affecting
The
final premise I will consider concerns whether a harm must be a harm to something. For the NIP to work,
benefits or harms must accrue to some particular individual. This idea is known
as the “person-affecting principle” (see Parfit 1984, 394 and 396–401; Hare
2007, 499; Boonin 2008, 132 and 139. Korsgaard (2018) uses the term “tethering”
to communicate the same idea).
The
principle has two versions, “narrow” and “wide,” though the labels are
misleading because the difference between them is not one of scope or
gradation. Better labels might be “token” and “type,” respectively. The narrow person-affecting principle deems
an action wrong only when the harms accrue to a specific (token) individual.
The NIP exists on the narrow version of the principle. The wide person-affecting principle deems an action wrong when harms
accrue to a population, regardless of the identity of the individuals who
comprise the population (see Weinberg 2004, 5).
One
way to solve the NIP is to avoid the narrow version of the principle. On this
approach, although we actually do not harm the particular individuals in the
future, we can call an action wrong by saying that an action harms the
population or by pointing out some other bad-making feature. For example, we
should conserve the environment because the future conserved world has a
population that is, as a whole, better off than the population in the
laissez-faire alternative (see Harman 2004, 90).
1.6
The NIP and future machines
With the four premises we have a better
picture of both the NIP and the available routes toward a solution. Different
moral theories will go in different directions. Staying within the framing of
narrow problems of creative responsibility, I will now shift to the context of
future machines and from “when” choices to “how” choices. The following section
will have the same structure as the first: I will introduce the problem and
then discuss altered versions of the four premises. My aim is not to solve the
NIMP here but to shed light on its distinctive challenges for the purpose of
encouraging deeper thought on the issues of public policy that inform our
design choices in technology. We must not focus only on existential risk/safety
and the moral machine problem.
2. The Non-Identical Machines
Problem
2.1
Introducing the problem
Consider
an example. Imagine a god contemplating the future of its creation. It decides
to populate an Earth-like planet with some entities. We can conceive of a vast
space of possible types of entities. The god is facing a choice: which entities
should it make? We are familiar with human beings, as diverse as they are. They
occupy a point or cluster of points in the space of possible types of entities.
We could conceive of something different. The god could create a creature that
feels excruciating pain with every step it takes, struggles to think through
problems, routinely fails to predict the consequences of actions, and is easily
prone to fits of rage. With the whole space of possibility available, if the
god makes those miserable creatures, does the god wrong its creation?
We
can conceive of another possible created entity. The god could create a
creature with senses finely attuned to pleasure, a body that is impervious to
painful diseases and injuries, a level of intelligence that enables it to
reason through abstract problems and discover truths about its environment with
prolonged and enjoyable deep focus, a level of emotional and social
intelligence that leads to political harmony, and no body odor. It is in the
god’s power to create these creatures. If it instead creates something like
human beings or the miserable creatures, has the god wronged its creation?
Consider
another case. The god itself is an entity, and thus it exists as a possible
type of entity. From the god’s perspective, it might judge that it has flaws
that it can “fix” vicariously in its creative act. Maybe the god wishes to make
something with superior memory, more emotional stability, or greater speed.
There is a host of issues here. First, how reliable is the god’s judgment of
its own flaws? Perhaps the fix will lead to what the god would deem to be more
severe flaws. Second, supposing the god is inexperienced and not omniscient,
how well can it predict the consequences of its actions? Third, is it
permissible for the god to create on the basis of the creation’s likelihood to
make the god’s existence better?
How
do these cases illustrate the NIMP? In the case where the god creates a
miserable creature, has the god harmed the creature in creating it? Our urge is
to say yes.2 But if the god had created the creature differently,
the miserable creature would not exist at all. A different, non-identical
creature would exist. With the whole space of possibility available to it, the
god cannot benefit or harm its chosen creation. The entities are not better or
worse off than they would have been on some different choice because, on a
different choice, they would not exist. These cases are meant to draw out the
intuition that the creator in creating has
obligations to its creation. The act of creation has moral significance. We are
inclined to say that the god, since it has so many options available to it,
should create an entity that would or could have a good existence. It is
difficult to answer the question of exactly which entity the god should create.
It is easier to see that the choice has moral import for the creation.
There
are limitations to the god analogy, of course. First, unlike a god, technology
companies do not have the power to create their machines ex nihilo. This
introduces an important level of complexity and uncertainty. What we choose are
the techniques and priorities. We then speculate about the finished products.
Second, the theological language downplays the reality that the technological “god,”
and the other gods living with it in the pantheon, will interact with their
creation. The god lives, mortal and vulnerable, in the world among its
creations. As it happens, the god has already made the choice to create
something stronger, smarter, and faster than it.
We
can now abandon the analogy and make the NIMP explicit. Many companies are
working to create machines. Each machine exists in the space of possible types
of entities. The companies’ goals, and the techniques they use in hopes of
achieving them, are the result of choices. Do the choices carry moral
significance? Here we can insert the moral restrictions or obligations placed
on the creator god in our earlier examples. We can imagine similar examples of
machines that have miserable or pleasant existences. Are we obligated to make
machines that fall within a morally-confined space of possible entities?3 Is our deliberation over the choice constrained by
moral considerations? It seems like it is in some way.
The
NIMP concerns the morality of the choices that affect what type of currently
non-existing, and likely unprecedented, entity will come to exist. Whether 1)
the NIMP is different in kind from the NIP, 2) the NIMP is a type of NIP, or 3)
the NIMP is a technologically-oriented NIP does not matter for my argument.
Although, as I remarked, the “when”/“how” choice distinction marks two
genuinely different moral components of a possible case, how we sketch the boundaries
of the NIP with respect to the distinction does not particularly matter.
We
can now turn to the premises. My main goal is to show that proposed solutions
to the NIP cannot be easily imported to the NIMP. The truth of some of the NIMP
premises might seem obvious, but I discuss them also to present implications
that they have in the context of technology.
2.2 Personal identity
Regardless
of how strong the claims about identity are in the NIP, they are far stronger
and more perplexing in the NIMP. The attempt to solve the NIMP through personal
identity is therefore more challenging. For Parfit, it was impossible for me to
have had different parents. Time is relevant because my parents could have had
their first born child at various times.4 Although it is plausible
to say that I could not have been born in the 1840s, there is nevertheless
something compelling about such cases. We talk in these terms all the time. To
say that I would not exist if I had been born in the 1840s strikes us as odd,
at least grammatically. It is not obviously incoherent, even if it implies that
I would have had different parents.
The
NIMP involves a different identity claim and avoids the 1840s puzzle. Is it
possible for you to consider the counterfactual of being born a chicken? If I
had been born (or hatched?) a chicken, I would not have had my parents. I would
have had chicken parents. Is this possible? Obviously not. I, a human, could
not have been born a chicken. (Being turned
into a chicken is a different case.)
The
increased difficulty of the NIMP is seen in the fact that the identity claims
are not focused on time- or origin-dependence, as they are in the NIP. Because
we are considering the difference between two different types of entities, when they are conceived/created or who their
parents are is irrelevant. If the god creates the miserable creature, then it
creates an entity that is not identical to the body-odorless creature. This is
all that must be accepted for the NIMP. The non-identity is derived simply and
uncontroversially from the difference in types. This leaves little room for one
to reject the NIMP-version of the personal identity premise.
A way to solve the NIP is to claim that
personal identity is not morally relevant. For Kumar (2003), what
matters in our actions are not particular individuals but “types,” the
relational positions we hold in an action (e.g. “parent” or “child”). This is
similar to Hare’s ingenious solution to the NIP that appeals to “de dicto
goodness” (2007, 516–23). Narveson
(1967) discusses a similar idea. Unfortunately, their solutions cannot
be imported to the NIMP because the “types” or “dicta” are precisely what
is in question. We might have obligations to a de dicto human child because we understand the place that human children
as a type occupy in the moral community. Specifying the type and articulating
our obligations to it are significant, but whether the type should exist – and
with this, how the type should change through technological development – is
precisely what is at stake in the NIMP.
There
are difficulties in applying these considerations to machines. Much of the
language around personal identity is ill-equipped for machine cases. A machine
is, to say the least, unlikely to be biologically conceived. It is likely
duplicable. Perhaps most importantly, it could undergo rapid, radical, and
frequent changes to its underlying architecture. The number of entities that it is could be indeterminate or constantly
in flux (see Vernor Vinge’s story “Long Shot” (collected in Vinge 2002) for an
exploration of this possibility). Simply put, the existence of such
sophisticated machines will (likely) require a new or expanded conception of
personal identity. The fanciful thought experiments that populate the personal identity
literature are slowly becoming realities. Even in a world of humanoid
intelligent machines where similarity to human beings provides a touchstone,
the list of personal identity problems remains lengthy, and there is an
assortment of tempting anthropocentric biases.
In
much the same spirit as this paper, DiGiovanna outlines a similar series of challenges
(2017). Future technologies might present us with “para-persons”: entities that
exhibit both the characteristics of personhood and further characteristics that
undermine personhood. DiGiovanna’s main example is the ability of an entity to
erase and rewrite itself quickly. Debates about personal identity are always
closely tied to issues of moral responsibility. The NIP is an instance of the
connection. DiGiovanna’s underlying concern is that the issue of
para-personhood is indicative of the general challenge that our canonical
ethical theories, insofar as they draw on theories of personal identity, are at
risk of not being viable in the future.
The
concern can be interpreted in two ways – as about either the moral machine
problem or the problem of creative responsibility. Forgive a speculative point
on each. On the former, I worry that our attachment to traditional theories of
personal identity, or our resistance to expanding them (either due to
anthropocentric/substratist bias or because of the apparent philosophical
intractability of such a task) will lead us to misdraw the boundaries of the
moral community – that is, to give incorrect answers to the moral machine
problem (Biondi 2018a). On the latter, my interest in solving the NIMP as part of a more general project of
solving the problem of creative responsibility, including its broad construal,
inclines me toward severing the link between personal identity and ethical
theory. But that is an issue for another time.
There
is an additional challenge to artificial identity. Because AI development is
not ex nihilo creation, we are
creating ever more sophisticated machines through particular techniques. With
respect to personal identity, because of the uncertainty and speculation, we
face an opaque and more challenging version of the NIMP. Our daily choices are
contributing to and changing our future machines. It is difficult to know how
these choices will affect their identity.
When
we combine the realities of technological development with the intuitions drawn
out by the NIMP, we find a crucial implication: the current techniques used in
creating future machines have moral significance. If a god, as creator, has
obligations to its creations, the god will face those (or similar) obligations
even if it has to build its creation ex
materia. The techniques used to create intelligent machines are homing in
on a particular area in the space of possible types of entities. Our current
design choices are limiting or constricting the space, making the existence of
some types of machines more likely than others. Even if the current machines
are not moral entities, the direction has moral implications. So the current
practices in AI development must be scrutinized with the eventual, and perhaps
the current, machines in mind, depending on the best theory of ethics and personal
identity. The act of creating intelligent machines has already begun. If the
act is constrained by obligations, the obligations are in effect now.
2.3 A life worth living
It is important to note the difference
between the moral significance of life itself
and a life that will almost certainly involve morally significant experiences
of a certain kind. A common view is that existence is
morally neutral. We
see it voiced by Hare as the “moral neutrality of existence” (2007, 509; see
also Weinberg 2007, 14). Fortunately, the move from life to existence is
justified because the concept of “life,” with its biological connotations, is
not what is important, notwithstanding discussions of “artificial life” (Boden
1996; Swanson and Schwitzgebel 2018). A “life worth living” is shorthand for
the unwieldy concept of a “morally or existentially acceptable quality of
existence of a morally significant entity.” So far the entities concerned have
just so happened to be/have organic lives; they’ve been entities whose lives have
involved them being alive. I bring this up because we are facing the prospect
of morally significant entities that are not alive in the sense applicable to
organic creatures. We can instead consider the broader concept of an “existence
worth having.”
With
the terminological fix in place, what complications do we face in the NIMP? If
an entity is one of a kind, or of an unprecedented kind, how could we determine
whether it has an existence worth having? It might answer if we asked, but how
would it be able to make the determination for itself? How could we evaluate
the answer? These are mysterious questions and there are numerous ways to
interpret them. To help, we can mark an exhaustive distinction among possible
types of entities: relative to an environment, there are (1) types of entities
whose existence is always worth
having, (2) types of entities whose existence is never worth having, and (3) types of entities whose existence is indeterminate with respect to its
worthwhileness. Within (3) we can also inquire into the likelihood that the
existence of the entities will be worthwhile. When a god is contemplating its
creative choices, is it obligated to select entities that fall within (1),
assuming there could be such types of entities? Can the god opt for (3) as long
as there is a sufficiently high chance that the existence of the entities will
be worth having (or a sufficiently high percentage of the entities it creates
will have existences worth having)? There are a number of problems here.
Certainly
a god should not create entities that for some reason cannot have
existences worth having. Perhaps the miserable creatures discussed earlier in
this paper fall into category (2). In that case, as with the NIP, we can
restrict the NIMP to cases in which the future machines have existences worth
having. The NIMP would run as follows: so
long as the future machine has an existence worth having, it would not be
better off not existing (because, by hypothesis, its existence is worth having)
and it would not be better off if we made different choices today (because then
it would not exist). But how can we determine, prior to creating, where an
entity belongs with respect to the three categories set out in the previous
paragraph? Because we have never created an AI before, we have no reliable way
to assess the quality of its existence. This is true not only because the AIs
have not existed before but because they will likely be quite different from
human beings. We must therefore solve two problems, one technical and one
moral: we must determine what the existence of the machines will be like, from
the perspective of the machines, before they exist (because, after they exist,
the issue of whether they should begin to exist is moot) and also develop the
moral theory that can determine whether such a machine should exist. On the
standard NIP, we don’t face the first problem, and thus the second is
relatively more straightforward.
The
NIP usually assumes that humans are the type(s) of entities that fall within
(3). We can debate the categorization, but in the NIMP, the issue is broader.
The god’s creative choice is a choice among categories (1), (2), and (3). The
space of possible entities therefore opens up before us. The concept of a “life
worth living” or “existence worth having” is no longer a conceptual oddity, or
a mere qualification on NIMP cases, but a notion that must be concrete enough
to guide creative acts. Thus there are two levels to the NIMP challenge: not
only must our analysis of the concept of an “existence worth having” be
sufficiently intelligible to guide our choices, but it must expand to encompass
more of the space of possible types of entities.
Now
we stack on top of this the complexities of ex
materia creation. In point of fact, we are already diligently creating the
machines of the future without considering whether their existences are worth
having. This might be a moral failure in itself.
2.4 Worse off principle
Before
turning to theories that reject the worse off principle, we should linger on
the complexities that the principle yields in the NIMP. It will be relevant to
possible solutions. When we consider a human in a wrecked environment and
another in a pleasant environment, there is a sense in which the comparison
procedure is perfectly straightforward. There are two possible human beings,
and the future where one of them exists in a pleasant environment is
preferable.
On
the NIMP we are not comparing the well-being of two entities of the same type.
But even with this complication, there is little reason to think that a
comparison is impossible. Instead of the well-being of the same type of entity,
we can simply consider the well being of any and all types of entities – humans,
chickens, machines, and so on. Here we face the well-known problem of
formulating a generalized comparison procedure that places the experiences of
all entities along the same axis of value. Can we say that a particular human
existence is better than a particular chicken existence? If we use pain and
pleasure as the metric, what do we make of a sophisticated AI that is not built
that way? We could easily list more complications.
Nevertheless,
even if we were to construct a metric by which to carry out such a comparison,
there is yet another layer of difficulty. In the NIMP we are comparing types of
machines that do not currently exist. And when one machine exists, we are
comparing its well-being with that of many machines that have never existed. We
are unlikely to have any precise idea of what they would be like. The procedure
would be full of hazy speculation. Hence, if we endorse the worse off
principle, the strengthened identity claim in the NIMP makes it more difficult
to argue that a machine is harmed when we make it one way rather than another.
Perhaps
we should reject the worse off principle and accept a non-comparative theory of
harm. Shiffrin, for instance, articulates one: “Harm involves conditions that
generate a significant chasm or conflict between one’s will and one’s experience,
one’s life more broadly understood, or one’s circumstances” (Shiffrin 1999,
123). A reader might feel like this could easily slip into a comparison
procedure. The “chasm or conflict” is between two things, one worse than the
other. More precisely, the chasm is between one’s experience and one’s will – though
the will is seemingly the will for a better
(off) experience. But I set these issues aside. Shiffrin continues, “Typically,
harm involves the imposition of a state or condition that directly or
indirectly obstructs, prevents, frustrates, or undoes an agent’s cognizant
interaction with her circumstances and her efforts to fashion a life within
them that is distinctively and authentically hers” (Shiffrin 1989, 123–24). On
this account, harm involves being alienated from the conditions one would will.
It prevents a person from achieving a harmony between their experience and
their will.
Harman
offers another theory. She states that “an action harms a person if the action
causes pain, early death, bodily damage, or deformity to her, even if she would
not have existed if the action had not been performed” (Harman 2004, 93). This
is a non-comparative theory of harm, but it is also a (brazenly!) stipulated
solution to the NIP. Harman is following Shiffrin in listing pains. The list of
harms is “unified by comparison with
a healthy state” (emphasis added).5 So it is difficult to find where
the non-comparative theory of harm actually is. Again it might feel like a
comparison procedure is looming.
However,
what if we set these worries aside and embrace a non-comparative theory? The
NIMP is about the harm of creating a machine of one type rather than another.
So we face an immediate challenge. The non-comparative theories are concerned
with the harms of entities of a known and fixed type. They are not directly
concerned with the harms of being an entity of a certain type. But maybe they
could be. There are two points to consider. First, the issue of personal
identity returns. There is something incoherent about the desire to be an
entity of a different type. Despite the intelligible surface grammar, I cannot will
to be a chicken. I either somehow think I already am a chicken in human form
(like an otherkin individual) or I will for something that entails the end of
my existence. (Being a human in chicken form is a different case.) These
considerations might point us to the idea that non-comparative theories of harm
only function when considering the different experiences of a particular entity
with a consistent identity. If so, they cannot help us make sense of the
alleged harms in NIMP cases. Second, according to Harman and Shiffrin, the
harms are pain, early death, bodily damage, and the like. Could the harm be
simply an existence that is not ideal or sufficiently good? Is the existence of
the miserable creatures a harm because of the pains or because of the existence
itself? If the harm is the creation of one type of entity over another, it is
difficult to see how the non-comparative theory can make sense of it. Of course
the miserable creatures discussed in this paper would be benefitted,
comparatively or non-comparatively, by no longer being in pain, but that is not
the issue at play in the NIMP. We are interested in whether the miserable
creatures should be created (even if we deem them to have lives worth living,
or adjust the case accordingly) instead of other possible types of creatures.
For
Shiffrin, harms interfere with the interests or will of an individual. Surely
an entity need not recognize and take issue with its own existence for the act
of its creation to be a wrong. If a god were to create the miserable creatures,
the god might make their shortcomings invisible to them. This is a common theme
in AI science fiction. It is intuitive to think that the creations have still
been harmed. Even more so in such a case! But in these cases, the non-comparative
theories might not currently be expansive enough to make sense of the alleged
harms to future machines. We will also need to encounter the issue of what a
“will” will be in these machines. But more fundamentally, and more to the
point, should we create something that has a will at all?6 If we can
but do not, are we harming our creation? The non-comparative theory does not
give us direction in these cases.
What,
however, if we assume that a non-comparative theory of harm is viable and
relevant in NIMP cases? Because the space of possible entities of future
machines is vast, there are many ways for creators to go astray. The likelihood
of harm rises as the space of possible entities expands. This leads to the
pragmatic issue. We may find we have solved the NIMP by accepting a
non-comparative theory as morally relevant, but we now need actionable insight.
What motivates the NIMP is the practical problem of how we direct AI development
through the space of possible types of entities. Even if a non-comparative
theory enables us to make sense of harms to future machines, it is difficult to
find concrete ways to avoid the harms. We must do more than diagnose.
2.5 Person-affecting principle
Here
the goal is to avoid the narrow person-affecting principle. The principle,
recall, states that harms must accrue to specific individuals. There are no
free-floating harms that are not harms to
somebody or something. (To avoid the issue of personhood, which is not directly
relevant here, I phrase the principle more broadly.) Consider Parfit’s Q claim,
which can be read as the wide version: “If in either of two possible outcomes
the same number of people would ever live, it would be worse if those who live
are worse off, or have a lower quality of life, than those who would have
lived” (Parfit 1984, 360). We can speak of a population being better
off than another, even if the individuals in the populations are entirely
different. The Q claim, it is important to note, is only about populations of
the same size. Parfit argues that if the wide person-affecting principle is
applied to different number choices, we are led to a series of repugnant,
absurd, and ridiculous conclusions (Parfit 1984, chs. 17–20). I will not detail
the conclusions here. I simply wish to mark again that particular approaches to
solving the NIP, if successful, soon face further problems.
Another
version of the wide person-affecting principle would be what Harman calls the
Impersonal Explanation: “The correct explanation of the impermissibility of the
action is not that it harms: it does not harm. Rather, the action is
impermissible because the world is better if the action is not performed; it is
impersonally better, though it is not better for any person” (Harman 2004, 90).
For example, we should conserve the environment because the future conserved
world is impersonally better than the laissez-faire alternative. Although we do
not harm particular individuals in our choice, the aggregate well-being of the
different populations will determine which choice we should make. In this case,
as Harman’s phrasing appears to suggest, we might not be talking about harms at
all.
With
the NIMP, the debate is different because our choices are not between two
possible future populations of machines of the same type. That is, if the two
possible future populations are of different types, we would struggle to apply
something like Parfit’s Q claim or Harman’s Impersonal Explanation. The wide
person-affecting principle is about different populations of the same type of
entities. As we saw in the previous section, we might propose ways of
broadening the principle or its application. This would require facing the
challenge of constructing the universal metric. Further, not only would the two
groups of machines be difficult to compare with respect to well-being (or
whatever the criterion is), but one of the groups would have never existed.
And, of course, there are far more than two groups at play. So if we want to
use the wide person-affecting principle to solve the NIMP, we would need to
adjust it and supplement it with confident counterfactual theorizing about possible
alternative populations of different machine types. Both are daunting tasks.
As
a final more speculative point, in the NIMP we would need to relate the
person-affecting principle to an entity with uncertain or unprecedented
personhood status. We face this problem when discussing the moral significance
of non-human animals, fetuses, and DiGiovanna’s “para-persons.” But the problem
is made more difficult by the fact that the machines are 1) the result of human
choices, at least in part, and 2) created ex
materia. On the first point, not only do we not know when a machine becomes
a “person” we could “affect,” but our design choices are determining what the
entity is and becomes. Certain assumptions about personhood, or the traits
relevant to it, are being brought to bear, at least implicitly, in the act of
creating new entities. To some, this might appear to solve the moral problem:
if we create something in our own image, we thereby know its personhood and
moral status. And if the intelligent machines are different from us, we will
debate the moral relevance of the differences by comparing the machines to
ourselves. My point is different. As I have been arguing, the discussion should
be about more than the moral machine problem. It is true that, before applying
the person-affecting principle, we must ask whether we have built persons. But
the discussion is also about the responsibilities that constrain creators:
“which machines should we make?” not “what should we make of machines?” This is
the core of the problem of creative responsibility. For the NIMP, personhood or
moral status is not about the categorization of entities. The problem
highlights and questions the assumptions that are reflected in our design
choices, techniques, and visions of the future.
This
is related to the point about ex materia
creation. As I noted, I am motivated by the possibility that our moral
obligations to future machines are in some sense active and binding now. One of
the most significant aspects of the NIP is the idea that the morality of our
current choices will be manifest in the future. This is a point of similarity
between the NIMP and NIP. In the NIMP we find ourselves in the position of the
god in our earlier examples, with the space of possible types of entities in
front us. We have begun creating. Since our current and past creative choices
in AI development have restricted the space, we have already made choices of
moral significance. We are simply unaware of whether we should be praised or
blamed.
2.6 Final observations
I
have been focused here not only on the theoretical plausibility of possible
solutions to the NIMP, but also on whether a solution can help confront the
pragmatic issue of which direction we should take the design of our
technologies. The NIMP is about “how” choices of narrow creative responsibility
and thus references a space of possible types of entities. Our design choices
involve selecting, directly and indirectly, entities from the space. Which
choices should we make? If our moral theory enables us only to criticize the
choices once they have been made, the theoretical solution is partial and
ignores the pragmatic spirit of the NIMP.
To
the philosophers who are not bothered by the NIMP, I recommend beginning work
on the construction of moral guidelines for design choices that have potential
harms to the created machines themselves as the central concern. I have yet to
see any such guidelines. And I hope to have demonstrated that we need them.
Notes
1. Some
people accept the problem’s conclusion that we do not have obligations to
future generations (see
Schwartz 1978 and Heyd 1994).
2. See
Adams 1972 for a discussion of the Leibnizian principle (likely of broad
creative responsibility) that a perfectly good being must create the best world
it can. I am focusing the NIMP not on the creation of worlds but on the
creation of entities in an already existing world – i.e. the focus is narrow,
not broad.
3.
This is complicated by the
fact that designers might not create an AI directly. They might instead create
machines or automated processes that create an AI. There are strong reasons to
think that this is the more likely future – the most persuasive being that it
is an accurate description of the present.
4. The phrase “first
born child” has a de re and de dicto interpretation (see Hare 2007,
514; Boonin 2008, 136; Weinberg 2008, 11).
5.
The passage quoted is followed by the parenthetical, “though I haven’t claimed
that all harms meet this condition” (Harman 2004, 111n22).
6.
This verges on the broad problem of creative responsibility.
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