Whether in daily mobility, in industrial applications, or in the form of assistance solutions at home, artificial intelligence permeates an ever wider range of our lives. It is associated with great hopes, but it also raises fears. Therefore, the call for ethical guidelines regarding the new technologies is becoming increasingly louder.
5 Questions About the Potential (and Limits) of AI With John Maeda
Computers can’t think the way you and I can – at least, not yet. AI technology is getting closer every day, raising fundamental questions about ethics, design, and what it means to be alive. In his book, How To Speak Machine, designer and technologist John Maeda acknowledges the concerns many laypersons have around AI: not only do robots look and sound increasingly lifelike, but they respond to input so quickly and have such stamina that we humans start to feel threatened. Nobody likes the idea of being outpaced (or replaced) by their own creation.
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The Path to Ethical AI: Major Obstacles and Solutions
From ordering pizza online with a chatbot to generating non-fiction texts and optimizing logistics processes, AI has made so many amazing things possible. Not only has it allowed businesses to automate and optimize complex processes, but it has also helped people with conducting research, analyzing vast amounts of data, and increasing the security of personal devices such as smartphones.
However, as AI-powered technologies grow and develop, so does their potential to assist cybercriminals with getting private data. Many governments across the world have legitimate concerns about the security of sensitive data handled by AI-enabled tools and are already working on corresponding laws and guidelines. On top of security risks, many share concerns about how AI can change the way people interact as well as potential job losses.
New Guide for Using AI in the Public Sector
Recently, Liberal Democrat leadership hopeful Jo Swinson urged parliament to ensure that any development of AI is done with ethics front and center. A new guide for the UK government has been created to help ensure that AI deployments in the public sector do follow such a path.
The guidance was created by the Office for Artificial Intelligence (OAI) and the Government Digital Service (GDS), with contributions from the likes of The Alan Turing Institute.
Regulating ML/AI-Powered Systems for Bias
Siri and Alexa are good examples of AI, as they listen to human speech, recognize words, perform searches, and translate the text results back into speech. A recent purchase of an AI company called Dynamic Yield by McDonald’s — which analyzes customer spending/eating habits and recommend them other food to purchase — has taken the use of AI to the next step. AI technologies raise important issues like personal privacy rights and whether machines can ever make fair decisions.
There are two main areas where regulation can be helpful.
Ethics in AI: When Will We Progress?
Ethics of AI is a subject we often hear about, however, I have a feeling that we're not taking the subject seriously or taking it in the right direction.
A Subject That Is Not on the Right Track
When the European Union says that there must be 7 main ethical principles around AI, the first of which is respect for human rights, we could laugh. Would that not be a basic principle, an overarching principle that anything in western democracies is supposed to respect? And when Google creates an ethics committee that includes a person with homophobic and xenophobic beliefs, even though these positions violate Google's charter, do we really believe that ethics is taken seriously?
Artificial Intelligence: A Radical Anti-Humanism
Photo credit: Stephan Larroque
Artificial intelligence and ethics, two subjects that go hand-in-hand in current literature, are often confined to the spectrum of the subject of privacy. Eric Sadin, a French philosopher, broadens the subject of the impact of artificial intelligence to the civilizational field and explains what he believes is at stake. His book "Artificial Intelligence or the Challenge of the Century (in French: “Intelligence artificielle ou l'Enjeu du siècle”) has made headlines in France, and it seemed natural to me to share his thoughts with you.