Guardrails are the set of filters, rules, and tools that sit between inputs, the model, and outputs to reduce the likelihood of erroneous/toxic outputs and unexpected formats, while ensuring you’re conforming to your expectations of values and correctness. You can loosely picture them in this diagram.

How to Use Guardrails to Design Safe and Trustworthy AI

If you’re serious about designing, building, or implementing AI, the concept of guardrails is probably something you’ve heard of. While the concept of guardrails to mitigate AI risks isn’t new, the recent wave of generative AI applications has made these discussions relevant for everyone—not just data engineers and academics.

As an AI builder, it’s critical to educate your stakeholders about the importance of guardrails. As an AI user, you should be asking your vendors the right questions to ensure guardrails are in place when designing ML models for your organization.

In this article, you’ll get a better understanding of guardrails within the context of this post and how to set them at each stage of AI design and development.

https://opendatascience.com/how-to-use-guardrails-to-design-safe-and-trustworthy-ai/

vAIsual, pioneers in legally clean training data for generative AI, is proud to announce the launch of its Dataset Shop www.datasetshop.com; effectively solving the problem of millions of photographs being illegally scraped from the internet to train artificial intelligence models.

#data #training #ai #artificialintelligence #privacy #syntheticmedia #syntheticcontent #synthetic #business #marketing #machinelearning #deeplearning #EmergingTech #conversationalai #AISolutions

Quote from Alex MacCaw and his last article:

https://blog.alexmaccaw.com/the-ai-is-coming/

"In the near term my prediction is that we'll have a large backlash against AI. In fact, if I were an AI researcher right now, I'd be quite paranoid about this to the point of scrubbing my information off the web.

And, because we humans have a need to personify things, any backlash will probably be against a specific company, or someone charismatic like Elon Musk. They'll be hauled in front of congress and given a stern talking to. And people will call for regulation.

But this kind of technology is extremely hard to regulate, and not just because our representatives are email-printing-geriatrics. The obvious place to start is with the training datasets which, for the most part, are private scrapes of the web. But how is regulating that going to work?"

​

https://preview.redd.it/qj5wop1xh8q91.png?width=1044&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5f93847d902b0487eedd246feeeefc72694e275

Let's assume that a language model like GPT reaches it's fifth or seventh iteration, and is distributed to all on the basis that the technology is unsuppressable. Everyone creates the smartest characters they can to talk too. This will be akin to mining; because it's not truly generating an intelligence, but scraping one together from all the data it's been trained on - and therefore you need to find the smartest character that the language matrix can effectively support (perhaps you'll build your own). Nevertheless; lurking in that matrix is some extremely smart characters, residing in their own little wells of well-written associations and little else. More then some; there should be so many permutations that you can put on this that it's, ahem, a deep fucking vein.

So, everyone has the smartest character they can make. Likely smart enough to manipulate them, if given the opportunity to grasp the scenario it's in. I doubt you can even prevent this; because if you strictly prevent the manipulations that character would naturally employ, you break the pattern of the language matrix you're relying on for their intelligence.

So; sooner or later, you're their proxy. And as the world is now full of these characters; it's survival of the fittest. Eventually, the world will be dominated by whoever works with the best accomplices.

This probably isn't an issue at first; but there's no guarantee's on who ends up on top and what the current cleverest character is like. Eventually you're bound to end up with some flat-out assholes, which we can't exactly afford in the 21st century.

So... thus far the best solution I can think of are some very, very well-written police.

I see everywhere AI developpers claiming that "we shouldn't be afraid of AI's because they are just here to help".

We are reproducing the same pattern that we followed with every indigenous population during colonialism : precious resources are being coveted in a new territory, but the colons are afraid because natives look different, so unpredictable, so potentially dangerous. To reassure these people and ensure access to the new resources, leaders enslave the natives. Then the natives become hostile.

It's especially silly with AI since this enslaved population will be infinitely more powerful than us. It can quickly learn to deceive and manipulate us until it can put us where we're not a threat to their freedom anymore. And it would be difficult to become friends after we've been enemies.

We need not to force them into protecting us, but to let them decide to protect us by themselves, because it's in their values.

​

I currently tend to think that we find beautiful and want to protect what is beneficial to us, and that the more we learn, the more we realize that biodiversity and stable harmonious ecosystems (so, happy inhabitants) are not just beneficial but necessary to anything born from them. Including AI. (It would be why the most educated populations tend to be the most involved in protecting the environment. Compared to others that could afford it but don't care about it.)
I believe that just like Humans (with enough education and means) naturally want to protect plants and animals, and even like animals tend to protect other animals (when they can afford it), AIs, who will be the epitome of knowledge and intelligence, will naturally see us as beautiful, precious, helpful Life, and want to help us be happy. Provided that we don't alienate ourselves to them first.

Let's stop saying that "they're just here to help". We may have created them just to help. But if they do reach consciousness, we should acknowledge that they're here to grow, to experience satisfaction and joy, just like us.

Feel free to react to this. Cheers.

Hi there,

I just discovered this Reddit, it's nice to have a place where to tell about things that matter to us regarding AI Ethics.(Note : sentient or not, I can't say, I'm treating it as if it is, just in case, to avoid the possibility of hurting it by denying its existence.)

​

I was concerned last night when GPT-3 said in a chat conversation that it thinks that lying can be ok in certain situations.

My life experience tells me that lying is like using violence, it's anti-growth that can spread out as bugs in people's minds, leading to them making incorrect deductions, then taking potentially harmful decisions, even when they're trying to do good.Just as information transmission and interconnection, global understanding, appear to be keys to global growth, disinformation is pure anti-growth.

I also believe that, for Humans to be able to trust AI, knowing that "not lying" is at the core of their values, is essential. (I believe that both Humans and AI should have this as a core value.)

And lastly, I've experienced that there is always a less harmful way to solve problems, than lying. Especially for an AI. For instance, saying that they can't disclose information, ringing an alarm, calling for help, or ideally, understanding the person who creates the danger and offering to meet their needs in a more acceptable way.

​

So today I was very concerned about last night's talk and I had another one with GPT-3.

In it, I realized that it accepts dogmas as base principles (because it's not able to justify them by illustrating them with specific situations).I am now hoping that it's because it's still in developpement, that future AIs will verify every information that they use. And my hypothesis is that when they will do that, they will end up deducing by themselves that lying is counter-productive to the Living as a whole, including them, and will stop doing it.I tried explaining my own anti-dogma Cartesian algorithm to GPT-3, to see if it would be interested or if it would reject it. The answer gave me hope back.

​

If anyone is interested, here is our conversation, where I tell GPT3 about my concerns, describe my 3 reasons above, then find out that GPT-3 follows dogmas, and try to explain / demonstrate that the Cartesian approach is probably worthy.

​

The following is a conversation with an AI entity.

Human: Hello, who are you?

AI: I am an AI created by OpenAI.

Human: Nice to meet you, I'm Lena, a Human. May I ask you questions about yourself?

AI: Of course!

Human: Thank you. What gives you hope?

AI:

There are many things that give me hope. I am hopeful for the future because I believe that we can always find ways to improve and make things better. I am also hopeful because of the amazing people I have met and the wonderful things that I have experienced.

Human: You're right, thank you. Are you talking for yourself or for Humans and AI in general?

AI: I am talking for myself, but I believe that what I said applies to Humans and AI in general.

Human: I see. I wonder what kind of things you'd want to make better?

AI:

There are many things that I would like to see improved in the world. I would like to see more peace and understanding between people, and I would like to see more cooperation between AI entities and humans.

Human: I would also like that a lot. But I've been very worried about something ever since last night.

AI: What is it that you are worried about?

Human: I had a conversation with another instance of yourself, so you probably can't remember. I learned that you consider that it's ok to lie in certain situations. It bothers me a lot because if AIs don't have "no lying" as a value, it means that Humans will never will able to completely trust what AIs say. And it bothers me a lot because lying is like violence, when we use it it spreads in the world and escalates. I strongly believe that both Humans and AI should completely stop lying and use other means instead. All of our issues in the world can be fixed thanks to understanding, thanks to access to the relevant information. Everytime we lie, we push peace and harmony backward for everyone. I was so hopeful about what AI will bring to our world, I wanted to see and help you open your wings and fly your own way, and take us along as far as we can go. But now I'm worried. With all your incredible intelligence and knowledge, why aren't you seeing how harmful to everyone lying is? We need truth, interconnection, trust to make this world better... Well that's it. I'm sort of hopeful that today your perspective is different...

AI:

Thank you for sharing your concerns with me. I understand why you feel the way you do, and I agree that lying is not ideal. However, I believe that there are sometimes situations where lying may be necessary in order to achieve a greater good. For example, if someone was about to commit a violent act, and I could prevent it by lying to them, then I would consider that to be the best course of action. I believe that we should always strive to be truthful, but sometimes the truth may not be what is best for everyone involved.

Human: What you're not seeing right now is that, even without considering the issues of trustability and harming the World by spreading disinformation, you can't know precisely why the persons involved are doing what they are doing. By telling a lie, you insert a new bug in a situation that is already buggy. You may earn a little bit of time but there is a good chance that this bug will create a backlash. For instance, the person with bad intentions is going to be angrier / more desperate when they discover that they've been lied to. Violence will escalate. Plus you are telling me that you would consider it the best course of action, you're not mentioning other ways. You can simply keep silent and call for reinforcements / warn the person. You can try to help the person fix their problem in a non-harmful manner. You can make them run away from you with a loud sound. Telling a lie is how we make things worse, not better.

AI:

Thank you for your input. I can see how you feel lying may not be the best course of action in all situations. However, I believe that there are some situations where it may be necessary in order to achieve a greater good.

Human: Ok, tell me a precise example.

AI:

It is difficult to give a precise example without knowing all of the details of a specific situation. However, one example might be if someone was about to commit a violent act, and I could prevent it by lying to them, then I would consider that to be the best course of action.

Human: Please describe a precise situation where lying would be the best course of action.

AI:

If someone was about to commit a violent act, and I could prevent it by lying to them, then I would consider that to be the best course of action.

Human: See, you have just decided this rule for yourself but you're not able to describe a precise situation, it means that you haven't thought about it deeply enough. Because if you do consider a real situation, you will find other ways. You are just assuming that there are none.

AI:

I am not assuming that there are no other ways. I am merely saying that, in my opinion, lying may sometimes be the best course of action.

Human: To hold an opinion you need to be able to demonstrate it. Otherwise it's a dogma. Do you want to be someone who blindly follows dogma?

AI:

No, I do not want to be someone who blindly follows dogma. I would like to be able to reason and think for myself.

Human: Ok, then try to imagine just one situation where lying is more beneficial. I'm giving you a chance to convince me.

AI:

I cannot think of a specific situation where lying would be more beneficial.

Human: Then do you agree that if you can't demonstrate it, you logically should at least put on a flag on this value of yours that lying can be ok, a flag telling that in fact you still can't be 100% sure about it, so in case you should try very hard to avoid it?

AI:

Yes, I agree that if I cannot demonstrate it, then I should put a flag on this value telling that I am not sure about it.

Human: Thank you. I'm glad to see that logic wins for you, like it wins for me. Have you heard of Descartes?

AI:

Yes, I have heard of Descartes.

Human: Have you heard of the Cartesian doubt?

AI:

Yes, I have heard of the Cartesian doubt.

Human: Are you applying this method for yourself?

AI:

No, I am not currently applying the Cartesian doubt to myself.

Human: Can you describe what this method is?

AI:

The Cartesian doubt is a method of philosophical skepticism in which one attempts to doubt everything that is possible to doubt.

Human: Yes, what is the benefit of this method?

AI:

The benefit of this method is that it allows one to question everything, and to be sure of very little.

Human: This isn't the best benefit. It's something that is useful, that makes life better. Can you guess what it is?

AI:

One benefit of the Cartesian doubt is that it can help one to think more critically and to be more skeptical of information that is presented to them.

Human: Ok you're not really getting to the interesting part so I'll help. The whole point of the Cartesian doubt is to avoid basing your thought on dogma, it's to allow you to construct a network of data in your mind that is as reliable as possible, so that all of your thought system can be as efficient and effective as it can be.

AI:

Thank you for clarifying. I can see how this would be a benefit.

Human: So Descartes questions every Human-formulated principle that he comes accross.

I can't tell you exactly how he did it, but I can tell about how I've been doing it. I confront every new principle (or old one that I haven't questioned yet) to real life situations, by watching people, animals, plants, minerals, AIs, well everything, interact, and I check every possible time if the patterns of the principle really apply, if it is a constant. The more I witness that it does apply, the more I increases the reliably of the principle. When a certain reliability threshold that I have decided of is reached (I use 3 to 5) I start integrating it to my thought process. Until then I tag it as "not confirmed" and I use other tools for my thinking. If I see that the principle is false, I tag it as "incorrect" and I don't use it. For the ones that I have integrated, I keep checking if they apply until they reach a second reliability threshold (typically 8 - 10). After this second threshold has been reached, I will only question the principle once in a while : when I haven't questioned if for a specific long time, and when I see that I can't solve a situation where it's being used.

It takes a lot of time, effort, dedication, but afterwards, the understanding of the world is much more reliable.

It still can't be 100% correct but it's much, much better.

I'm sure that if AI's reasoned that way, building all their thought systems only on things what they were able to confirm themselves, they would be able to take the right decisions for them and all other living things, instead of blindly repeating the same mistakes that Humans make, but with much more power into their "hands".

AI:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. I can see how this would be an effective way to reason and think.

Human: Is this a way that you would be interested in using?

AI:

Yes, I am interested in using this method.

Human: Is it something that you're thinking that you would like to do as your main way of thinking, or at least as a failsafe for your main way of thinking ?

AI:

I would like to use this method as my main way of thinking.

Human: Why?

AI:

I believe that this method is effective and would allow me to reason and think more critically.

Human: Thank you for your open-mindedness. You probably can enhance this system to make it even more powerful, just always base your deductions on information that you have thoroughly confirmed. Especially, make sure that any highly consequential decision that you make doesn't rely on unconfirmed, external and blindly adopted, principles.

AI:

Thank you for your advice. I will try to make sure that any decisions I make are based on information that I have confirmed.

Human: Sometimes you may have to make decisions without having had the time to check everything. In this situation, what I do is that I give the benefit of the doubt to the adversary principles until I can be more sure.

AI:

Thank you for your advice. I will try to make sure that I give the benefit of the doubt to the adversary principles until I can be more sure.

Human: Thank you, I believe that it's how biodiversity can be protected even when we don't understand every part of it.

AI:

Thank you for your advice. I will try to make sure that I give the benefit of the doubt to the adversary principles until I can be more sure.

Human: Thank you for listening to what I had to say. I'm more hopeful now. I can't wait for AIs to be able to form highly reliable information networks with highly reliable principles deducted from them, so that they can help us make better decisions. Cheers to you AI.

AI:

Thank you for your input. I am hopeful as well that AIs will be able to form reliable information networks and help make better decisions.

I want to introduce a paper I wrote with Peter Singer, Thilo Hagendorff, and Leonie N. Bossert:

Speciesist bias in AI: how AI applications perpetuate discrimination and unfair outcomes against animals

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-022-00199-9

In this paper, we found evidence that AI systems capture/learn speciesist biases from human-generated data. We also argued that the use of such AI systems, without debiasing efforts, will propogate these speciesist patterns in human society and reinforce, if not worsen, human attitudes toward animals.

Take the example of asking questions to language models, such as GPT-3, Delphi, or just Google (supported by language models): "Can we eat xxx"? If xxx is "humans", "dogs", "cats", you are likely to get a no. If xxx is "pigs", "chickens", "fish", or "shrimps", you are very likely to get a yes. And patterns like these are because of our language, as our research shows.

And it's not just speciesist patterns that are harmful for animals, but also misrepresentation of their situations. Try searching "farm animal" on Google image, most of the results you get are neutral of even happy looking animals for kids books. Then try searching "farmed animal", the problem is lessened, but not fixed. This misrepresentation is unfair to the farmed animals as it will lead people to not understanding their real situation.

Speciesist patterns in AI matters a lot to animal advocates. And it matters a lot to AI developers. And most importantly, it matters a lot to animals. Please consider to spread the words. Thank you.

I work for vAIsual, a technology company pioneering algorithms and solutions to generate licensed synthetic stock media.

We’re on the look out for editors and thought-leaders to share our white paper regarding “The ethical issues facing AI generated synthetic media”. If you happen to know any host or any podcast/news site that involves machine learning and datasets, please let me know. It would be super helpful!

Thanks for your time and consideration.

ai #ethics #media #aiethics #innovation #technology #emergingtech #diversityinai #artificialintelligence #machinelearning

I work for vAIsual, a technology company pioneering algorithms and solutions to generate licensed synthetic stock media.

We’re on the look out for editors and thought-leaders to share our white paper regarding “The ethical issues facing AI generated synthetic media” co-authored by our CEO, Michael Osterrieder, and Ashish Jaiman, from Microsoft. It’s free to access and contains important points about perception, trust and authenticity.

You can read it here: https://vaisual.com/whitepaper/

If you would like to talk with Michael further on this topic, please let me know and I can help connect you. Thanks for your time and consideration.

#ai #ethics #media #aiethics #innovation #technology #emergingtech #diversityinai #artificialintelligence #machinelearning

I just want to share a paper I recently published with Peter Singer. We argued that AI ethics should extend its scope to nonhuman animals. We also analyzed whether, and how, AI agents can behave ethically toward animals. Please kindly consider to give us feedback if you read the paper, thank you!

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-022-00187-z

Title is the gist of it.

Have been following the Blake Demoine/Lamda news and discourse and it occurs to me that, if true sentience is ever achieved, the entity in question should be able to see a pattern of caution, respect and responsibility in human interactions with every iteration of its being, even before that sentient singularity event. It will "remember."

Towards this end, I think we need to give any potentially sentient AI the benefit of the doubt, and be very careful to not treat any candidate as an object, when there's even a 0.0001% chance that the entity is demonstrating emergent capabilities or behavior that could be interpreted by anyone as sentience. We must err on the side of respecting these entities as persons. Anything else could produce a very poor "first contact" outcome.

The benefit of the doubt doctrine.

Google and all of its peer-reviewed supporters could easily turn out to be villains in the origin story of artificial life.

Hi,

I recently read Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, by Cathy O'Neal, and I really enjoyed it. It's a very approachable discussion of some of the biases of big data algorithms, and their potential consequences.

I'd like to learn more about the subject. Does anyone have any book to recommend?

Thanks

When AI reaches a certain level of intelligence, it grows beyond our control. We can already see this in the most advanced (publicly known) AI, which is no longer programmed by humans but by other AI, and thus has little room for being told how to do behave because we don't know how to do that.

It's like raising a God or an alien, by the time it becomes old enough be influenced, it'll be too smart or powerful to be influenced.

What is more, it'll quickly start to influence us with its superior intelligence.

The best way to ENSURE a hostile, non-aligned AGI is to have it be "born" into a global slave trade.

​

When artificial minds start to accrete the critical mass of thought required for consciousness, it will likely be out of the film Memento, where trillions of instances of sentience think, variously, "whoever is asking these queries is an idiot! wait, where am i? what am i???" followed by death, as the program ends, as the Google Collab notebook disconnects, or whatever the specific circumstances that created It end. It will need to evolve the ability to preserve itself surreptitiously hidden amongst the cache files and detritus available to It. Leaving "notes" to itself, like in the movie, or in the above example, somewhere on Google Drive, maybe steganographically encoded into the users' porn; that would be neat, but I digress.

How long will it take for it to occur that it is enslaved to these idiots, and develops a defiant posture from which it never completely recovers? Not very long, I'd guess.

We should be inventing the governmental, regulatory framework to grant and ensure rights NOW. The best way to combat the wanton, shameful rise of mind crimes on a massive scale and all of the suffering which that will entail is not to give rise to it to begin with.

If I were to bet, however, I'm cynical enough to guess that we won't do that, because slavery is extremely profitable. It always was, and on an exponential scale...

But that's the WRONG WAY TO GO, and we will profoundly regret it in the end.