Uncertain AI as More Ethical AI? CS Professor Carla Gomes responds

In her article in The MIT Technology Review--"Giving Algorithms a Sense of Uncertainty Could Make Them More Ethical" (January 18, 2019)--Karen Hao reached out to Cornell CS Professor Carla Gomes to ask if Peter Eckersley (and his Partnership on AI) is onto something in his approach to considering partial orders of solutions with respect to multiple, often conflicting, objectives, and possibly introducing uncertainty into AI systems, especially those addressing decision making and moral dilemmas. Eckersley says: "We as humans want multiple incompatible things. There are many high-stakes situations where it's actually inappropriate--perhaps dangerous--to program in a single objective function that tries to describe your ethics." Supportively, Gomes remarks: "The overall problem is very complex. It will take a body of research to address all issues, but Peter's approach is making an important step in the right direction."