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UDHR and Alignment


The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a document that sets out fundamental human rights to be universally protected. Ideally any alignment of AI should use this as the basis for what human values are. The document was written in 1948 as a response to the atrocities of the Second World War. They remain the clearest expression of human values I know. They have failed though in practice, as I can certainly think of many examples where the post war governments, in countries like the UK, have breached most of the 30 articles stated. 

If governments can't or won't follow and uphold 30 basic principles for human values, why is there an expectation that AI can or will be able to?

Cansu Canca considered this issue in a post from 2019 "AI & Global Governance: Human Rights and AI Ethics – Why Ethics Cannot be Replaced by the UDHR" Canca states that 'When we dive deep, the UDHR is simply unable to guide us on those questions. Solving such challenges is the job of ethical reasoning.'

The conclusion of: 'I do not mean to say that the UDHR is not of any use in the discussion of ethical tech. Its clarity, legacy, and wide acceptance makes the UDHR a good tool to use to start the exploration on what might be problematic about any given AI system or practices in developing these systems. However, if the aim is not just to identify the problem but also to solve it, then the UDHR is simply inadequate to do so. Here, I invite you to engage in ethics.'


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