It’s only been, what, 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, am I right? And it wasn’t until fairly recently that women in Saudi Arabia were finally allowed to rev up those Jaguars, and get in the driving seat for once, true?
Well, rights activists just can’t catch a break, because it’s not just humans they’ve got to think about now. It’s their artificial counterparts. I mean, didn’t it make you wonder when Charlie Bucket’s dad’s job at the toothpaste factory was handed over to a robot? (Charlie as in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
The point here is that as the hand of the robot grows stronger by the day, we seriously need to start thinking about the ethical issues posed by this surge of mechanical influence, and how we can address them.
It’s all good under that hood
Okay, it’s not always about robots taking over your job, and I think it will be a while before an AI chick or guy will leave you hanging on your first date, and then lock you up in an underground facility somewhere on Okinawa, so we really can argue that AI has the potential to do some serious good in the world.
Actually, Mariarosaria Taddeo, deputy director of the Digital Ethics Lab at Oxford University, makes the good point that “from diagnosing cancer and understanding climate change to delivering risky and consuming jobs, AI is already showing its potential for good.
“The question is how can we harness this potential?” An excellent question, one that could possibly unite the entire human force in addressing it perhaps?
And it seems as though we need to act fast, because every other day some new AI breakthrough enters our world, and if we don’t take the reigns on it, we might find ourselves walking in rows, chained up, to be decomposed and turned into biofuel for a new AI army.
In all seriousness, Taddeo cannot emphasize the incredible potential of AI to do good. “From environmental disasters to financial crises, from crime, terrorism and war, to famine, poverty, ignorance, inequality, and appalling living standards,” our bot buddies can certainly make the world a better place.
And it’s already being used to address such serious issues as climate change (so not a myth). An example of this is an AI device that’s being fed hundreds of images of coral that can then be used to analyse coral’s resistance to ocean warming. Not bad, AI, not bad.
When things turn ugly
This may sound like something from a sci-fi novel, but when there is a lack of transparency about the what goes into the algorithms when developing new AI tech, it becomes difficult to predict how it’s going to respond.
For instance, do you remember back in 2016 when graphics chip designers, Nvidia, released a self-driving vehicle? Yeah, guess what, they were totally unclear about what algorithmic patterns were used in the design, and for all we know, it could have been programmed to cause some serious damage, rather than cruise passengers along route 66 with a complimentary cola delivered by built-in AI arm.
Which brings us to the heart of the matter for this piece. What happens when a self-driving vehicle knocks somebody over, like the autonomous uber did earlier this year? Who’s at fault for it? Again, it all comes back to that lack of transparency, how would we know if the car was programmed to keep passengers safe, as in driving-wise, or safe from external threats, as in people approaching cars? And does it matter at the end of the day, when it’s already had its bumper bloodied?
If this is not clear, then it’s entirely feasible that the car with a mind of its own would think it’s keeping passengers safe by running over potential rogue threats on the outside, as in an innocent lady on a bike that had her mind on other things when she decided to cycle across the road.
Discrimination and privacy among the other issues
AI can be pretty discriminatory, believe it or not. Tadeo points to the example of Compas, an AI risk-assessment tool that was used by Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections.
This system was used to determine who should be granted parole and ‘lo and behold, it ended up discriminating heavily against African-American and Hispanic men.
When a team of journalists actually cracked down on the numbers, studying 10,000 cases, they discovered that the system predicted that black defendants actually pose a much higher risk of recidivism than in real life.
Oh my, if that’s the future of AI, we’re definitely heading for the bottom of the barrel. Can you imagine all the racist checkout bots at Starbucks?
And it’s not just discrimination. There’s the small matter of privacy as well. Do you remember Facebook’s data breach that caused millions of users to raise their fists in fury? Well, with AI, it’s going to be a lot worse, and that’s because to improve on accuracy, large data sets will need to be used.
Put it this way, AI is already tracking entire cities in China, that’s millions of people coming under the surveillance of some invisible Aeye sweeping across their city while they’re out and about minding their own business. And as they push forward with AI innovation, they size of datasets is only going to increase, and GDPR is going to have a field day when this starts to happen.
Measures in place to help humans cope
The discussion of AI and its implications is already weaving its way into the world, and some initiatives are already working on understanding the tech.
Movements like AI4People, the first global forum in Europe on the social impact of AI, working with a consortium of different actors including the European Commission, European Parliament, civil society organisations, industry and media, are opening spaces of dialogue in the pursuit of goals from:
identifying core values to inform an ethical framework in the development of AI, to designing a European ethical framework for a “good AI society”.
Earlier this year, the EU Declaration on Cooperation on Artificial Intelligence was signed, pledging to work together on both AI ethics and using AI for good.
Taddeo reckons that more stakeholders need to come on board, so we can push the debate on AI from multiple perspectives to, in her words, “understand the nature of post-AI societies and the values that should underpin the design, regulation, and use of AI in these societies.”
Always hope for a bright AI future
Well, it’s not like human beings are strangers to new technologies. I mean, we’ve already had electricity and steam engines, and we’ve managed to deal with them to some extent. It’s still early days for AI, but Tadeo sums it up best when she says:
“It is our responsibility to steer the use of AI in such a way to foster human flourishing and well-being and mitigate the risks that this technology brings about.” If you think about, AI can be pretty cool, I mean who didn’t love C-3PO, also known as the most polite mutli-functional bot ever?
AI captain.
