We at AI-Ethics.com need the help of a variety of skilled persons to serve as volunteers. Share your expertise with us in this important project. Again, email us to volunteer your time, energy and thoughts. Help us to design and build ethics codes for present and future AI. We need to address all levels and types of artificial intelligence: special, general, weak, strong, obedient, idiot-savant, equal and super intelligent. Some of this will need to be codified into universal global law. Lawyers need to be involved and we provide some special expertise in that area. But we need all kinds of people with interest in the area, especially experts and students outside of the Law.

How should the letters of these laws read? What activities should be covered? Should it include basic research limits? The ethics of artificial intelligence is more than an issue for scientists and economists. It is an issue of social value of the highest import for everyone. Ethics and Law must be a key part of the solution, both short term (see Nick Bostrom’s list below), long term and deep future.

What do you think of the doomsday scenarios? What good and bad things might happen with Super AI? What sort of future do you want to have happen? What roles in society should AIs be allowed to take-over? To enhance? What should their role be in the military? In weapons construction?

What about the fast approaching issues related to AI’s driving cars? That’s already happening! What about the trolley problem and related choice issues?

The Trolley problem may be beyond the technical skills of today’s autopilot AI sensing and recognition abilities, but probably not for long. It is a tough argument. More than 35,000 people die on American roads every year; over 1.25 million people die worldwide. The no-fear sides says that since the trolley problem is so rare, we should not hold up development or scare the public by talking about it. We say we need to do both. This will be regulated, so we need to be proactive, not reactive. Besides a good consensus legal answer should encourage consumer adoption, not discourage.

What about product liability issues and other litigation likely to involve AI systems? Who is to blame for when something goes wrong? Will there be legal caps on liability? Insurance?

What about the relations between humans and AI? Will AIs ever be granted legal rights? Do you want to go the Kurzweil Borg route? Do you want to attain super-intelligence by plugging into AIs in the sky? What if that required surgical implants? What if it required merger with a type of hive mind, a collective created and maintained by AIs?

What would you like to see happen with employment? Should we do away with money like Star Trek? What about a guaranteed minimum income? What are your views of job automation versus job augmentation? What career advice would you give today’s students? What futures, good and bad, do you see for your grandchildren as the result of AI? How can you make positive changes to protect the future?

Will we control intelligent machines or will they control us? Will intelligent machines replace us, coexist with us, or merge with us? What will it mean to be human in new age of artificial super-intelligence? What future would you like to design? What meaning?

AI-Ethics.com is interested in getting people together to dialogue on these issues and more. We want to bring both sides of the debate together for friendly discussions. No winners or losers, just mind openers. We want open, honest dialogues. This will do far more good than our AI leaders taking pot-shots at each other on social media. We would like to bring both sides of the debate together, not to debate, but to dialogue, to listen, to find common ground. This is described further in our Introduction and Mission Statement page.

We have in mind a no-press allowed conference where we get the leaders of both camps into a room together to hash this out. We are mostly lawyers around here and know about the value of confidential discussions and have extensive skills in mediation of disputes, but we could always use more.

Write us if you might be able to help make this happen. Again, we do not have a date yet, but the location for the in-person event would be near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Please contact Ralph if you have any suggestions or might want to volunteer your time or funds to help make this happen.