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Add Ethics Section / Considerations #295
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@erogol What do you think? This should likely be considered before someone gets hurt :( |
@PetrochukM What do you suggest to do? |
Thanks for taking the time to respond, this is a tricky issue that we need to work through together as a community. As the leading TTS code base, I think there is a great opprotunity to start defining what ethical open source lifelike TTS looks like! :) Goal(s)
Suggestion Example Outcome |
Lastly, I'd consider adopting this oath: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/a-hippocratic-oath-for-artificial-intelligence-practitioners/ Some of the principles:
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I appreciate the intention @PetrochukM but these misuses seem hard to defend against from within this repo or based on tying it to analysis, which the skeptic in me thinks may just slow down progress without discernible benefit. I think that the ethical discussion, important as it is, would be more suited to happen at another level and in a more general sense that is detached from this specific project (since the concerns are common to all TTS). Saying this, I'm merely giving personal opinions here and have no formal ethics experience. If we take your two suggestions of making people go through an application process and restrictions commercial use, these would likely not deter someone motivated by the exploration of senior citizens. Someone who might proceed with that kind of scam will not be concerned about breaking commercial terms because it pales in comparison to the punishment relating to a scam. It would likely be hard to prove in any case. And only an application that severely impacted legitimate users would have the sort of teeth required to stop or slow down a bad actor. That said, I'll try to keep an open mind and look forward to hearing what others have to say on this. |
Pure personal comments. I think it is important to think about ethics of AI projects. However, placing a document about it is kind of futile. Since anyone with malice in mind, would not really read and care about it since the code is already there. Having user information before the code also hinders the progress. That would keep people using it away and issue some privacy concerns. We cant also really say anyone with the given info is secure to use TTS since it is really hard to verify the real identity. Being all said, I agree that we need a generic framework against malicious AI usage everywhere not only TTS. |
Documentation is futile to combat the evil-doers, but it may convince non-evil researchers be more thoughtful with the models they create / release. Something to the effect of Not within the scope of this repo, but the only way to fight against malicious use of TTS is to develop technology which can discriminate synthetic speech from real speech, and have that technology embedded everywhere. It's the same issue with GPT-2. |
@JRMeyer yeah we can write, but I don't think it will fand off people anyways. But it'd look good :) |
Can you please reopen this? I believe there is more that should be done with regard to this issue. Here is how I came to my conclusion:
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@PetrochukM you'r welcome to move it to https://discourse.mozilla.org/. |
Okay. Thanks for pointing me there. Do you think that forum will lead to a meaningful discussion of this serious issue as suggested in #295 (comment)? With regards to issue ownership: @erogol Do you have time to take on this issue? Would this be a priority for you? A proper ethical process involves careful consideration and attention. If not, why do you not see this as a priority? |
It sounds like this is not a priority issue... which is unfortunate given the significant negative impacts this open-source library could have. I'd encourage everyone on this thread to read this: https://twitter.com/metaviv/status/1205212076035080192?s=20 The article referenced in the tweet sums up the dominant viewpoint in this thread... |
I wonder how one could enforce the technical solutions in an open source project. You can't log what people do, the watermark code can just be removed, agreements ignored. |
@PetrochukM I note you didn't raise this on the discussion board: https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/tts As you appear to be involved with a commercial speech solution, maybe you could share some details on the discussion board regarding the AI Ethics approaches your company is considering? Are you looking at updating your T&C and/or to implement any aspects of the points you raise and how do you see these working in an open source solution? Do you see any conflict with a commercial software operator suggesting open source projects apply restrictions? |
@m-toman There are some initial first steps, for example:
I also don't want to be the only person thinking of solutions. If possible, I'd like some help... @nmstoker Thanks for digging into my job history... I'm not prepared to be interrogated about our small startup's policies. |
A Hippocratic Oath for AI Practitioners At the end of the day, I don't expect the people here to solve the world's problems. I expect that we'll execute on basic prevention measures of the misuse of this technology. |
My apologies, wasn't meant to come across as interrogation, i thought you'd be willing to bring relevant experiences to the discussion but I appreciate if you prefer not to. Btw: no digging required, it's on your profile here. |
@PetrochukM I think you are severely underestimating the complexity of this problem. Your suggestions proposed here:
In addition, they would completely derail the focus of this project, which is to implement a high quality open source text-to-speech engine, into solving the general problem of ethical licensing of software and machine learning models. This discussion is better suited for the Open Source Initiative forums, or the Electronic Frontier Foundation forums, or the Mozilla Governance forum. Not the TTS issue tracker. |
The changes I proposed above are simple and don't require lawyers...
@reuben I am actually doing something about this issue by bringing it up and I am leading ethics initiatives in my own company. It's easy to be a naysayer. It's hard to come up with solutions! |
This is not a solution to anything. We already have consent from voice actors through contracts and licenses. It doesn't change anything for someone using this code on their own, as we don't have control over that due to the MPL license of this code.
This also doesn't fix anything, due to the MPL license of the pre-trained models. Anyone who gets somehow "vetted" (by checking their LinkedIn? wtf) is free to then redistribute the model without any vetting themselves. |
Actually? Sorry, I looked for an hour for the contract or agreement with Linda Johnson (https://keithito.com/LJ-Speech-Dataset/). I'd love to see it! I stopped working with Linda Johnson dataset because I couldn't find any evidence that she/he provided consent for her likeness to be used. It's unfair to use her voice if she didn't consent to it.
This language sounds devoid of nuance saying things like "anything" and "wtf"... I'd love your help with coming up with solutions. It's important to remember that deep fakes have already caused a lot of pain and anguish in our society. |
It is the first sentence after the title, as well as the last sentence of the second paragraph. Linda Johnson licensed their voice recordings into the public domain when contributing to Librivox.
It is devoid of nuance. I don't think this issue will accomplish anything beyond wasting project resources. It is already closed. I have given examples of places where this can be discussed with the appropriate nuance (legal/licensing/governance forums), and where it actually has a chance of going anywhere. Please stop commenting here as if this complex issue is simply a matter of adopting some bullet point list of ideas. Specially after the issue has already been closed. |
Licensing voice recordings is different than licensing your likeness... Putting an audio book in the public domain is far from giving permission for everyone to clone your voice / identity. Can you help me navigate the various legal/licensing/governance forums? If you think that it'll help make meaningful progress in preventing misuse of deep fakes, I am all about it. I am unfamiliar with how those forums would stop from the misuse of open source TTS.
We can make simple changes now to prevent misuse and you are communicating that there is no point. Like I said before...
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I would start by creating a thread on the Mozilla Governance mailing list about how to deal with ethical restrictions in MPL licensed projects. First you probably should read up on software licensing. As I've said here multiple times, you are completely ignoring the licensing issue which is at the core of this problem. You can describe the problem of ML abuse/deep fakes, and how Open Source licenses do not permit things like usage restrictions or user vetting. You'll then hopefully get some feedback from people who know about software licensing and can help set guidelines for existing and future Mozilla projects. As for the technical countermeasures like fingerprinting, feel free to make PRs against this repo. I'll gladly review them. |
Hey! Thanks for your contribution.
I'm concerned this codebase could be used in a number of bad ways:
Before this effort continues, there should be some ethical consideration that this work won't be used to harm another person, undermine government systems, and undermine the legal system.
The implications are large; therefore, it's important that there is serious thought put into the ethics of this open-source project. I'd recommend we invite and get advice from ethics experts to be safe.
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