AI Ethics: Who will police the machines?
Just weeks ago, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology released a set of guidelines developed by the National Governance Committee for the New Generation Artificial Intelligence, in the area of Artificial Intelligence Ethics. The English language media have titled these guidelines either “New Generation Artificial Intelligence Ethics Specifications,” or alternatively, “Ethical Norms for the New Generation Artificial Intelligence” ( Chinese original ). While already a world leader in AI technology , this new effort could further cement China as the frontrunner in the battle for AI dominance.
Broadly, the guidelines aim to help integrate AI ethics into the entirety of the AI lifecycle. The guidelines set forth six(or eightoriginal) fundamental ethics rules for AI development. These include: (1) that AI should aim to enhance the well-being of humankind; (2) that AI should promote fairness and justice and protect the legitimate rights and interests of all relevant stakeholders; (3) that AI should protect the privacy and security of its users and their data; (4) that AI should be developed in such a way as to ensure human controllability, transparency, and trustworthiness; (5) that AI should be designed to be accountable; and (6), that the Chinese government should aim to generally improve AI ethics literacy.
This last rule is intended to be implemented in part by helping relevant stakeholders learn and popularize knowledge related to AI ethics. This AI ethics literacy component further requires that stakeholders both understand the relevant issues in AI ethics, but also, in their public communications neither overstate nor downplay the risks associated with AI machines.
These fundamental guidelines also set out the requirement that AI should at all times be subservient to humans. To this end, the guidelines suggest that AI developers include specific safeguards in their AI machines to allow humans to override an AI machine when necessary, or to withdraw from any or all interactions with an AI, and, when needed, safeguards that can allow human users to suspend total operations of an offending AI system. In short, the Chinese want non-AI people to always have meaningful control of the AI systems that are developed.
To promote these guidelines, the National Governance Committee reportedly further set out 18 specific requirements for the governance of AI which include emergency mechanisms to retain control of rogue AIs, and a general Asimovian rule that AI can never be used to endanger public safety or national security.
Whether or not other stakeholders outside of China will have confidence in these new ethics measures proposed by the Chinese government remains unclear. Consider, for example, the United States Government’s long-held distrust regarding the putative machinations of Chinese technology corporations.
