AI is transforming almost every aspect of how businesses operate and engage with the world. This technology can unlock the potential of data and revolutionize our daily routines by automating simple and repetitive tasks. AI will be key to help address massive global challenges like pandemics by accelerating drug discoveries and more. At the same time, there are also valid concerns about how this technology is being used, and governments are starting to respond. In April 2021 for example, the European Union unveiled its proposed regulation designed to address the potential threats to health, safety and fundamental rights posed by AI systems. As governments explore the critical questions presented by the advancement of AI, companies also must take responsibility for how their own organizations build and use AI.
A new World Economic Forum (WEF) case study lays out the stakes and affirms IBM’s leadership in trustworthy AI. Used irresponsibly, AI has the potential to erode trust, propagate inequality and create harm. Organizations that want to use AI have a fundamental responsibility to foster trust in AI solutions. IBM has been guided by this view for years, and our leadership in this space resulted in IBM's human-centered approach to trustworthy AI, an approach that puts ethical principles at the core of our governed data and AI technology and fosters an open and diverse ecosystem.
To dive deeper, here are some of the practices IBM has developed which help us build AI capable of fostering that trust.
Because developing and managing trustworthy AI is an ongoing process, IBM applies high-level Principles for Trust and Transparency to continually build and strengthen that trust. The principles make clear that the purpose of AI is to augment human Intelligence; that the data and insights generated from data belong to their creator; and that powerful new technologies like AI must be transparent, explainable, and mitigate against harmful and inappropriate bias.
IBM also embeds ethical principles across our company's global operations through an AI Ethics Board which provides centralized governance and decision-making authority. The AI Ethics Board helps instill a culture of technology ethics throughout the company and is one mechanism by which IBM holds our company and all IBMers accountable to our values and commitments for the ethical development and deployment of technology.
It’s easy to say that ethics matter, but actually embedding those ethical principles into the technology itself is more complex. Organizations recognize the importance of a holistic approach to managing and governing their AI solutions across the full AI lifecycle.
