AI的道德路口：当你说想创造更美好的世界时你在做什么？

AI的道德路口：当你说想创造更美好的世界时你在做什么？

上周我们简单提到个人信息保护，它与数据保护是人工智能法律领域最为基础也是最紧迫的两个问题。我们也约好本周聊数据保护，暂且就从我们最常见的电视信息开始吧。

1970年代，罗杰斯先生所管理的公共电视台几乎是单枪匹马在一个充满暴力的电视媒体群体中，争取独立向数千万青少年传达希望和自我肯定的正面信息。在这整个过程中，他都试图证明即使是在现代科技的嘈杂声中，仍有很多人确实在为建立一个更好的世界而努力。除了期待完善的法律加以约束之外，我们也期待更多像弗雷德·罗杰斯一样“一个坚强、充满激情”又温文尔雅人，不偏不倚、自律自由。

弗雷德·罗杰斯在参议院发缓慢温和，他的第一句话是：“孩子们最早从家庭生活中学到的就是信任。”视频原文请点击文末链接。

Mr. Rogers and the navigating the ethical crossroads of emerging technologies

March 25, 2018MattUncategorized

Fred Rogers may seem like a strange subject for an AI-related blog post, but bear with me. Everyone knows Mr. Rogers from his long-running PBS show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Fewer people know that he was an ordained Presbyterian minister prior to his television career. And fewer still know the quality of Fred Rogers that led me to write this post: namely, that he was a technological visionary.

You see, television was in its infancy when Mr. Rogers completed his education and was attempting to decide what to do with his life. When he saw television for the first time, he immediately recognized the new medium’s potential, both good and ill. The programming that greeted him definitely fell into the latter category. As he later recounted, with what is probably the closest Mr. Rogers ever came to betraying frustration and annoyance, “there were people throwingpiesat one another.” In other interviews, he expressed dismay at the number of cartoons aimed at children that used violence as a method of entertainment.

Mr. Rogers saw the negative impact such images might have on people’s minds and behavior. He wanted to ensure that the technology was not just used for mindless entertainment and trivializing violence. Just as the new technology could be used for ends that were unhelpful at best and corrosive at worst, it could also be used to improve people’s conceptions of themselves and their interactions with others. If he could harness the power of television for more productive ends, he could use the technology to build a better world. That was the genesis of the Neighborhood he built and maintained for the next thirty-five years.

It is easy to see the parallels between the challenges and potential that Mr. Rogers saw in television and those that we see today in the era of Big Data, AI, and social media. Like television programming, the algorithms that drive Facebook and Twitter news feeds effectively decide what information people receive. They also make it possible to disseminate that information with unprecedented speed. One imagines that if Fred Rogers had lived long enough to see the current social-media-driven world, he would have had much the same concerns about Big Data and algorithms as he did about the pie fights and cartoon violence he observed on television six decades ago.

Particularly in light of the recent scandal involving the use of Facebook users’ data by Cambridge Analytica, it seems that tech companies face a stark choice. On one hand, they can look to maximize their short-term profits by aggressively monetizing the unprecedented access they have to ordinary citizens’ personal data, even if that means encouraging divisiveness and vitriol, with fake news and other forms of digital manipulation taking the place of pie-throwing. On the other hand, they can use their new methods of reaching and influencing people to help build a better world.

It will, to be sure, be a difficult and often lonely fight for companies that decide to take the socially responsible route. But then again, it was not an easy road for Fred Rogers either. Violence on television most certainly did not diminish in the decades his programmed aired. Quite the contrary–by 1999, according toa report from the University of Michigan, the average American child had seen 16,000 murders on television by age 18. His own show had a near-death experience in its infancy, when Congress nearly cut off the funding that madeMister Rogers’ Neighborhoodpossible.

But Mr. Rogers recognized that even though he could not control what other media outlets did, he still could make an impact by making sure there was a Neighborhood that did things the right way. He, almost single-handedly, convinced Congress to continue funding public television (see video above). Over the following decades, he used his initially modest platform to reach tens of millions of children with a message of hope and self-affirmation. In the process, he proved that even amidst the cacophony that modern technology was generating, it was possible to use it to build a better world.

This past Tuesday would have been Fred Rogers’ 90th birthday. Now more than ever, people working with new technologies would do well to follow his example.

英文原文地址：http://www.lawandai.com/2018/03/25/mr-rogers-and-the-navigating-the-crossroads-of-emerging-technologies/#more-1082。