In this case, they used questions from advice columns and “am I the asshole?” reddit discussion and a few other places.
They simplified them into “right/wrong” and ended up with 1.7 million right/wrong answers.
It works in 90% of the cases in the United States.
So it’s geared around US morality.
But it did very poorly on questions that were complicated and it also did poorly on questions like the one you mentioned because they are culturally specific and there was no clear answer there.
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What I find interesting though, is while there are some specific differences between cultures in specific cases, the general rules “tend” to be very similar globally across cultures.
For example, I think murder is considered wrong globally.
But what constitutes murder specifically? That can get tricky.
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I wouldn’t let a machine decide though.
I like the idea of feeding machines as much as possible in order to come up with “normative ethics” for a particular culture just to have something to compare with. But I wouldn’t ever want it to be used in a legal setting.
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So ultimately, I agree. I don’t think it’s possible to have a universal single set of morals that is normative across the planet except in very broad ranges.
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