Because the Temporal Rights paradigm identifies the existential authority of each agent of change in the universe, this concept has its own vocabulary of generalized terms. I present them here.
AIMM (Artificial Intelligence Moral Machine): The methodology that enables moral evaluations by a secular algorithm based on existential characteristics of the agents of change in the universe.*
Alignment: the goal and process of constraining AI to a moral behavior parallel to human morality.
Authority: The existentially observed power of an operator to effect change.
Capability: A separable characteristic of an operator that exhibits power and authority to effect change.
Culpable: Morally or ethically responsible, guilty.
Dependency Stack: The structured, continuous hierarchy of objectively observable capabilities of operators.**
Domain: The three-dimensional space and/or the informational realm comprehended by an operator’s operations.
Harm: The traditional legal meaning that at least the operator’s rights have been infringed and perhaps also its capabilities damaged or thwarted.
Operator: Any agent in the universe with capabilities to effect or prevent change.
Operation: Any action, active or passive, exhibited by an operator’s capability to effect change.
Power: The active force required to effect change.
Temporal Right: The existential dominion and authority observed in an operator’s exercise of a capability.
* A terse explanation of the methodology of the AIMM: When a collision of rights occurs, the AIMM makes a comparison by identifying the rights violated by the other operator. These two violations are then identified within the Dependency Stack, where they are converted into numeric values. One value may be null, indicating the operator committed no violations. These two values indicate the intensity of the moral harm done by each operator. The AIMM’s output is therefore traceable, auditable, and observable, making it an ideal moral constraint for artificial intelligence.
** This stack is a reflection of the fundamental challenge of aligning AI, however, the stack addresses this challenge at a profoundly more fundamental level, an existential level. The AIMM presents an algorithmically parallel replication of the human process of moral evaluation, enabling AI to exercise moral judgment on an existential basis that is neither prescriptive nor value-imposing, while remaining normatively constraining.
