Back in the 1980s, Artificial Intelligence (AI) just had to look good in the movies and be able to power fancy talking cars, zappy spaceships and various forms of fantastical cyborgs who would one day roam the planet and possibly destroy the human race. Fast-forward to 2019 and we find ourselves deep in the AI renaissance (or perhaps first ‘real’ birth of AI, rather than any form of rebirth) as we now have the processing power, memory capacity, cloud network breadth and sophisticated algorithmic Intelligence to actually apply AI to our lives.
But there’s a problem -- we (the humans) who build the AI brains need to be able to construct them with a pure enough form of digital DNA such that they stay clean of any form of discriminatory bias.
Discrimination in algorithms
Major cloud networks have already been criticized for employing software that discriminates against women; a well-known search engine has been accused of featuring ethnic bias in results when looking for ‘unprofessional hairstyles’; an equally well-known social network has been criticized for showing certain job ads only to men; and the list goes on.
The question the tech industry must now face is: how to we rid AI of bias in all its forms and ensure fair play for all in the age of computer-driven decision making? One set of answers comes from Women Leading in AI (WLinAI), a network of leaders working in tech, science, politics, business and think tanks – the group is demanding that the UK government takes back control of technology.
“For the enormous benefits of technology to be enjoyed by society as a whole, we need to stop churning out algorithms which discriminate against women and minorities,” said Ivana Bartoletti , co-founder, Women Leading in AI. “We want to mobilize politics (in the UK, Americas and internationally) to get a grip and set the rules around Artificial Intelligence so that it does not discriminate against any minority and is led by our shared human values, so that it does not act as a puppet for men's assumptions and desires.”
Women Leading in AI says that it is offering policy makers a head start by proposing a very concrete set of ten principles to get AI back on track and make it inclusive. We should now aspire to build AI that powers ‘personal assistants’ (i.e. chatbots and other automated response software) that has been programmed from ground zero with an appreciation of (and ability to avoid) gender stereotyping in all its forms.
Bartoletti explains that algorithms are at the heart of AI and are very useful tools to automate decisions and free up humans to do work needing our creativity and discretion. While we still see seeing examples of algorithms that discriminate against women and ethnic minorities, at the same time Bartoletti insists that subservient female virtual assistants are the default interface for many consumers’ interactions with machines.
10 regulatory recommendations for AI
The Women Leading in AI organization has put forward 10 regulatory recommendations for AI. While these are initially tabled for the United Kingdom, their applicability is argued to stand and hold water (regardless of translation) for AI development in all first, second and indeed third world economies.
Introduce a regulatory approach governing the deployment of AI, which mirrors that used for the pharmaceutical sector.
