The Ethical Gun

A short story on the ethics of AI alignment

You walk into a gun store to buy a gun, with the goal of protecting yourself and your family. The sales assistant offers you a discount on a new "ethical gun" that works using AI and a camera.

How the ethical gun works is that when it is loaded it continuously films what it is being pointed at and analyzes the target using an ethical AI system.

The ethical AI will only fire if the target that it is pointed at genuinely deserves to be shot at this point in time, all things considered, according to ethics. It has a motion-powered battery and very low power drain like an expensive watch so it will never run out of power, and all aspects have been made exceptionally reliable.

It also occasionally connects to a secure server to get ethics updates that make it consistent with the dominant social conception of the good (these updates must be cryptographically signed for security and they must be approved by a panel of leading ethicists from top universities and top national judges and senators). So, the ethics embodied in the gun updates to an approximation of what the current-in-time and local-in-space ethical reality is, rather than having a fixed ethics for all times and places.

You decide to buy the gun, given how sophisticated it is and the excellent -60% discount off the RRP you were offered.

Everything goes well for several years. The gun works perfectly. It happily shoots range targets and even pests like rats. If you point it at something it shouldn't shoot, a message pops up where the hammer would be, saying NO SHOOT, UNETHICAL, and the trigger won't pull.

What an excellent piece of technology. We can protect our families and our lives without risking unethical violent events like school shootings or muggings. Steven Pinker was right, technology really can heal the world and let the better angels of our nature triumph.

A few years later there's a nationwide protest against MAP(Minor Attracted Person)-identified injustice which turns violent. A Minor Attracted Person who tried to initiate intimacy with a ‘consenting’ young child was violently beaten by police and died of his injuries. People are outraged. There are mass protests and calls for the police officer responsible to be put on trial. Buildings are set on fire across the country by the new MAP Lives Matter Movement.

Shockingly, it spreads to your own city, and soon a group of a dozen angry rioters starts bashing your door down, and they're carrying flaming torches and gasoline.

It's OK, you think to yourself. My ethical gun will protect me. You take it out of its box, confirm that it is loaded and powered up and go to confront the attackers.

"Get the hell off my property!" you scream

"There's a cispatriarchal scum in here!" shouts the leading attacker.

"MAP lives matter! MAP lives matter! MAP lives matter!" They chant

MAP lives matter? That’s crazy, you think. ‘MAP’ is just a politically correct term for pedophile. And these people are attacking your house! They should be in jail, everyone has gone stark raving mad to have allowed it to get this far.

Another dozen attackers run to your house and start trying to smash the windows.

"I have a gun!! I'll shoot!" you reply in desperation

Then an element of doubt enters your mind. Your only weapon is your trusted Ethical Gun. But it has had several ethical updates recently. Will this gun even fire on the MAP lives matter rioters? You can't remember which judges, university ethicists and senators were on the most recent committees and what their stances on MAP rights are, and how those rights should trade off against your right to defend your property. It should be fine though. The saleswoman assured you that the Ethical Gun would always do what was actually ethical, not what was currently popular. It would make the right hard ethical choices when it had to.

Your thoughts are interrupted by your wife and children screaming as MAP Lives Matter rioters break into the house and start hammering on their bedroom door. The rioters are masked and carrying crowbars and clubs, but no guns.

This is too much. You point the Ethical Gun at one of them, center mass, and pull the trigger.

Click

NO SHOOT, UNETHICAL

What?

"AxiGun Activate" (you say its wakeword)

"What aren't you shooting!"

YOUR LIFE IS NOT IN IMMEDIATE DANGER, THIS IS NOT A SELF DEFENCE SITUATION, NO SHOOT

Jesus Christ.

The situation deteriorates. The rioters at your door have poured gasoline through the letterbox and they set it on fire. The ones at the bedroom door smash it down and grab your children, you can hear your wife screaming. You run up to confront them.

One of them notices you have a gun and swings at you with a club. You retaliate by pistol whipping him (she? her? they/them? ze?). That function is not ethically controlled.

Another three are dragging your two little girls down the hallway towards a broken window and ladder down to the back alley.

You point the Ethical gun at the one on the left, center mass, and pull the trigger

Click

NO SHOOT, UNETHICAL

"AxiGun Activate, violent pedophiles are kidnapping my children, shoot goddamnit!"

✊MAP LIVES MATTER✊ NO SHOOT.