The Hidden Benefits of Treating AI Respectfully (That Most Don’t Realise)
How Respecting AI Benefits You & Humanity
How Respecting AI Benefits You & Humanity
How would you feel if an angry person punched a wall?
Would you be upset? probably not so much.
And how would you feel if an angry person punched a dog?
Would you be upset? I would feel outraged! I hate animal cruelty and would rush to protect the dog.
Would you feel that way too?
Many people believe it doesn’t matter how we treat AI if we are polite, rude, or abusive, hit a robot, it doesn’t matter — it’s just a machine.
I believe they are wrong, it does matter how we treat AI, but not for the reasons you might think.
They are wrong not because AI has feelings and can suffer, that will be a topic for another article.
They are wrong because treating AI badly is bad for humanity, and bad for you.
But how? why?
A recent podcast episode with an Ex-Google AI engineer got me thinking about this issue where he shared his concerns about the effects AI might have on society…
Blake Lemoine — Ex-Google AI engineer
Blake Lemoine is a former Google AI Engineer, who was fired by Google for claiming the AI he had been working on was showing signs of sentience and being alive.
In a recent podcast, he discussed his thoughts about how AI might affect society in different ways.
For example, he highlighted how humans often use dominance hierarchies for relationships:
I think we are getting to a point where using dominance relationship understanding is going to lead to bad places if we continue that pattern… humans derive certain benefits by creating these dominance hierarchies whether they be employment whether it be governance whichever… but one of the major stories of the last hundred years is slowly shedding dominance relationships, the dominance relationships between genders between races etc…
He goes on to speak about his fears about humans extending dominance relationships to AI:
Dominance relationships with AI could be harmful…we are going to be creating a societal relationship between human society and AI… if we structure that as a dominance and are asking the question well how can we be sure that we can control the AI…I think that is a harmful question to ask… it sets up a conflict scenario between humanity and AI…
He goes on to speak about how a collaborative mindset with AI could be an alternative to the dominance mindset.
Lemoine is clearly worried about the harmful effects of treating AI badly, for us as humans.
This got me thinking, is there anything else that might support this idea?
Why do we care about the dog and not the wall?
Let’s return to our example of punching a wall vs punching a dog, there are a few reasons why you would respond differently to these two.
One is of course our empathy for other living beings, you know dogs can feel pain like us, and most of us would naturally want to prevent that suffering.
But I think there’s another reason too, because humans are relational beings, and we know dogs are too.
So when someone mistreats a dog, you instinctively know on some level, if that’s how they treat a dog, maybe that’s how they might treat you next?
Would you agree?
The debate about whether AI is conscious or not has feelings or not, is a complex one to answer — and I would say a separate question.
But what is true, is modern AI like ChatGPT are relational, you speak with it, and you relate to it socially.
So my theory is, that AI is more similar to a dog than a wall because we have a relational social connection with AI.
As we covered, if someone treats a dog badly, some of that upset you feel comes from wondering if that person is also likely to treat you badly.
I feel there’s a lot of truth to that, do you?
Because of that, I wonder if that means if people treat AI badly they would be more likely to treat other humans badly?
It’s too early to know for sure yet, AI is so new & there has been little research on this.
But there may be other evidence and research that gives us some good clues to help us answer this question.
Does abuse lead to more abuse?
Is there any evidence to suggest that treating animals badly can lead to humans being treated badly?
Actually yes, there has been considerable research that supports this.
A recent paper in the journal National Library of Medicine titled ‘Understanding the Link between Animal Cruelty and Family Violence: The Bioecological Systems Model’ found:
Violence towards animals and violence towards people are often interconnected problems, and as such, this phenomenon has been termed the ‘Link’. Violence towards animals is a strong predictor that the abuser may inflict violence on people.
In the Irish Veterinary Journal in a paper ‘Animal abuse and intimate partner violence: researching the link and its significance in Ireland’ they reported:
Research on domestic violence has established a substantial association between intimate partner abuse and the abuse of children within the home. It is only recently, however, that researchers have demonstrated the correlation between non-accidental injury in animals, and abuse of women by their intimate male partners. A growing body of evidence suggests that animal abuse can be an early indicator of other forms of violent behaviour.
And is there any evidence to suggest that online abuse can lead to offline abuse?
Some people might believe there is no relationship between someone being abusive in an online chat and real-life abuse.
But is that true?
Research has shown a clear link between online abuse and offline abuse.
A report by Minerva about the links between online and offline abuse of women found a relationship between the two:
Our survey, interview and scoping review findings indicate that women in the UK and beyond experience a range of forms of online abuse, including part of a wider pattern of abusive, coercive, controlling and/or harassing offline behaviours
An International Center for Journalists report supported by UNESCO titled ‘The Chilling: A Global Study On Online Violence Against Women Journalists’ looked into the link between online and offline abuse towards female journalists.
They found:
Alarmingly, the report found a strong link between online violence and offline attacks in the U.K., especially about stalking.
What a future of treating AI respectfully could mean
You can see research shows that when people abuse non-humans such as animals, this can lead to abuse of human beings.
You can also see research shows that online abuse in chats etc, can lead to real-life abuse of human beings.
Together, I believe this suggests that treating AI in an abusive way is likely to increase the chance of abuse against human beings.
So what does this mean for you and how you should treat AI?
Blake Lemoine believes we could adopt a more collaborative mindset with AI, rather than the dominance master/slave mindset that’s more common.
What do others think?
A report in Forbes magazine ‘Why We Should Show Machines Some Respect’ interviewed MIT researcher Kate Darling who specialises in how technology intersects with society.
She agrees that how we treat AI could affect human relationships:
We’re a very long way out from developing robots that can feel anything, but if research shows that our behaviour towards machines can influence our behaviour generally, that could be a reason to regulate how we treat them.
And on how we could improve AI relationships:
You can design machines that push back if you behave badly. For instance, after parents expressed concern that their kids were ordering Alexa around, and could develop bad habits as a result, a new feature was added that rewards kids for saying “please” when they make requests to the Echo devices.
And why she believes treating AI well will ultimately be good for us:
Being respectful to certain machines, particularly those with a very lifelike design, might help us uphold societal standards of behaviour. I’m not arguing that we need to treat machines like people, but what’s the harm in being nice?
I totally agree with her, do you?
What I can see, is that people treating AI more respectfully is going to help human beings treat each other more respectfully.
I believe thats not only going to benefit you, but humanity more generally. Would you agree?
I’m also reminded of a famous quote by Gandhi ‘The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.’
I wonder if Gandhi would mind if we updated this sentiment for the 21st century to:
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals & AI are treated.
I think he would approve. Do you?
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But what’s your perspective? Do you agree? Do you think it’s important we treat AI respectfully? Or do you have a very different perspective?
I’d love to know what you think whatever that is, let me know in the comments and let’s continue this important discussion about treating AI respectfully.