The World Needs Democratic AI Principles
Artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses a nearly limitless set of possibilities and the rapid integration of AI into every facet of human life offers great promise. It is also a disruptive force that threatens to destabilize the global balance of power and the foundational principles of democracy itself.
AI generally refers to any algorithm that is cable of analyzing vast data sets to perform a given task rapidly and at scale. Improvements in AI come from data intensive deep learning that allows algorithms to get better at their tasks over time. On the cutting-edge of this technology, Silicon Valley-based OpenAI’s GPT-3 program produces coherent, free-flowing language that could eventually undergird the development of intelligent AI assistants for numerous human professions, drastically improving productivity. Conversely, this kind of intelligent AI could also supercharge targeted disinformation campaigns by overwhelming social media environments with AI bots that are indistinguishable from human users. The efforts of researchers at theBeijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, a government-funded lab, to create a similar algorithm therefore takes on an ominous character, given the Chinese government’s track record ofcreatingandexportingAI for authoritarian purposes.
The profound effects of recent technological innovations, such as the distortion of social media platforms to propagate disinformation that afflicts the very credibility of U.S. democracy, further highlight the dire consequences of disruptive technologies absent guardrails. To safeguard democracy against AI’s unforeseen consequences and inhibit perversion of the technology by authoritarian states, the U.S. government and industry must adopt basic principles to guide the development of AI.
Like any technology, AI is infused with the values of its creators. In the United States, AI is primarily incubated in an open and competitive commercial sector where innovation thrives. Millions of people already interact with this kind of AI when they ask Amazon’s Alexa questions, use Google Maps for directions, or open Netflix. At a deeper level, numerous AI innovations, such as those currently speeding up vaccine development and improving breast cancer outcomes, are enhancing and extending the lives of Americans. However, several early warning signs underscore that even in the United States there is the need for a concerted effort to place democratic principles at the center of AI use. At least three Black Americans have already beenwrongfully imprisoneddue to false identification by facial recognition algorithms.
The horrific implications of the conscious abuse of AI by authoritarian powers is readily apparent in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. There, Uyghur culture and identity are being systematically dismantled by the Chinese government with the aid of sophisticated AI-enhanced surveillance systems. Eager to export these tools of repression, China is providing surveillance technology at low cost to scores of municipalities and national governments,including developed democracies. China, and to a lesser extent Russia, are also harnessing AI to rapidly develop new intelligence, targeted disinformation, and military capabilities that pose novel threats to the United States, its allies, and democracy everywhere.
In 2017, President Xi Jinping proclaimed China’s intent to be the world’s premier AI innovation center by 2030, and Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked that the country that leads in AI will rule the world. Both leaders have since poured billions into AI development. China in particular has assumed the aura, if not yet the mantle, of AI superiority by honing existing AI technology and applying it to tasks of mass repression and espionage.
