I’ve seen lots of talk recently about the moral threat of AI. So, what does the MOQ have to say about it?

To start with, how about a fact which appears to be lost in much of the discussion.

No computer has ever made a moral judgement which it hasn’t been told to make and so there is no reason to think this will ever change. Believing this will change spontaneously as a result of improved intelligence of machines is just that, a leap of faith, and not supported by evidence. As it stands, it is the human programmer making all moral judgements of consequence. Computers, being 0’s and 1’s, are simply the inorganic tools of the culturally moral programmer.

Unfortunately though, this isn’t likely to be appreciated any time soon because of a philosophical blind spot our culture has. That blind spot is our metaphysics which neglects the fundamental nature of morality and in doing so gets confused about both where morality comes from and whether machines can make moral judgements independently of being instructed to do so.

For example, in the case of a recent foreign affairs article – Nayed Al-Rodhan appears to believe that AI will start making moral judgements as a result of more ‘sophistication’ and learning and experience.

“Eventually, a more sophisticated robot capable of writing its own source code could start off by being amoral and develop its own moral compass through learning and experience.”

The MOQ however makes no such claim which, as already mentioned, is contrary to our experience. According to our experience it is only human beings and higher primates who can make social moral judgments in response to Dynamic Quality. Machines are simply inorganic tools and their components only make ‘moral decisions’ at the inorganic level.

That’s not to say though, that there aren’t any dangers of AI and that all risks are overblown. AI – being loosely defined as advanced computational/mechanical decision not requiring frequent human input – threatens society if it is either poorly programmed and a catastrophic sequence of decisions occurs or if it is well programmed by a morally corrupt programmer. However each of these scenarios aren’t fundamentally technological but philosophical, psychological & legal in nature.

The unique threat of AI is this aforementioned increase in freedom of machines to make decisions without human intervention making them both more powerful and more dangerous. The sooner our culture realises this, the sooner our culture can start to discuss these moral challenges and stop worrying about the machines ‘taking over’ in some kind of singularity apocalypse. Because unfortunately, if we don’t understand the problem, a solution will be wanting, and therein lies the real threat of AI.

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A Platonist and a Sophist discuss Quality

“Catherine Rowett has been a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, Norwich (since 2003), Reader in the School of Archaeology, Classics, and Oriental Studies at the University of Liverpool from 2000 to 2003, and before that Reader in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wales, Swansea. Her publications include Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy (1987) and Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love (1994), as well as the chapter on Heraclitus in the Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume 1 and many articles on a wide range of issues in Ancient Philosophy from the Presocratics to the Early Christian period.” From Amazon.com

It’s been approximately two thousand five hundred years since Socrates, Plato and the Sophists roamed ancient Athens. It’s been about that same amount of time then since a Sophist discussed Quality with a Platonist. You can see my modern day Sophist response to Catherine Rowett the Platonist academic’s review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by clicking here.

My thanks first and foremost to Catherine Rowett for doing what so few ancient greek academics have done by acknowledging the existence of Robert Pirsig’s insights into ancient greek philosophy. While her views toward them are mostly antagonistic; writing a paper on them is largely a step forward. Thanks also go to Dr. Ant McWatt who provided final draft comments.

The abstract is as follows:

“This paper reviews Catherine Rowett’s (Catherine Osborne from 1979 to 2011) examination of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM) and Plato’s Phaedrus which can be found by clicking here. After providing a summary of the Phaedrus dialogue and the context in which it was created, I provide a rundown of Rowett’s examination of the book and show that because our values shape our experience, Rowett’s value of Plato appears to blind her to a correct reading of ZMM. This is not intended as a formal paper and hence I have taken liberty with links in place of citations.”

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Benefits of the MOQ

There are many benefits of the Metaphysics of Quality. A question I’m often asked when explaining the MOQ to others is:

‘Why should I believe that value is the source of all things?’

The first response to this question is that unlike the belief that either subjects or objects are at the base of reality – value isn’t something we believe, value is something we experience. Therefore the best way to see if value is at the source of all experience is to try this idea for yourself and to see if it indeed does have any quality. So really the main reason to see value/morality as the most fundamental thing in the universe is that it’s better and more beautiful than if we don’t. There is no reason why we currently insist that either Objects or Subjects are fundamental in the universe. Like all beliefs this belief is itself open to questioning. So what’s better is if we see value/morality as fundamental in the universe and not either subjects or objects.

The Metaphysics of Quality, in particular, is a far superior and more eloquent way of understanding experience. This is because it provides a better conceptual framework for understanding a whole host of problems which exist when we simply use a Subject, Object Metaphysics that neglects the importance of values or morality.

Over the next several posts I’ll be outlining some of these benefits..

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The New Age movement and the MOQ on first glance are well suited for one another. As Wikipedia says:

‘The movement aims to create “a spirituality without borders or confining dogmas” that is inclusive and pluralistic. It holds to “a holistic worldview,” emphasizing that the Mind, Body, and Spirit are interrelated.’

However the problem begins with the addition of the term ‘spirit’. It’s a slippery word which can lead to folks getting burned at the stake because of their bad ‘spirits’. Once ‘spirit’ is brought into the conversation you can say goodbye to the empirically verifiable strength of science and hello to pseudoscience and anyone bringing in whatever pseudo-scientific thing they see fit.

The term value on the other hand cannot be co-opted in such a way. Anything can be valuable but using the MOQ we can break value up into a hierarchy of values, each level of which are part of experience and can be empirically verified.

There is an advantage to the New Age movement however and that’s in its ability to create a space where science, and specifically quantum mechanics, can be discussed in an easily accessible way way that won’t shy away from any apparent logical inconsistencies.

In a popular New Age movie called ‘What the bleep do we know?’ there is a great explanation (above) of the famous double slit experiment. The explanation ends with the statement “The observer collapsed the wave function simply by observing!” and from a value free objective scientist perspective that would be the correct way of putting it. However a better way to put it is that the “values of the observer dictated what was observed” because , unlike a scientist may assume, values are more fundamental than physical matter.

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