Will we ever agree to just one set of rules on the ethical development of artificial intelligence?
Australia is among 42 countries that last week signed up to a new set of policy guidelines for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Yet Australia has its own draft guidelines for ethics in AI out for public consultation, and a number of other countries and industry bodies have developed their own AI guidelines.
So why do we need so many guidelines, and are any of them enforceable?
The latest set of policy guidelines is the Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
It promotes five principles for the responsible development of trustworthy AI. It also includes five complementary strategies for developing national policy and international cooperation.
Given this comes from the OECD, it treads the line between promoting economic improvement and innovation and fostering fundamental values and trust in the development of AI.
These recommendations are broad and do not carry the force of laws or even rules. Instead they seek to encourage member countries to incorporate these values or ethics in the development of AI.
But what do we mean by AI?
It is hard to make specific recommendations in relation to AI. That is partly because AI is not one thing with a single application that poses singular risks or threats.
Instead, AI has become a blanket term to refer to a vast number of different systems. Each is typically designed to collect and process data using computing technology, adapt to change, and act rationally to achieve its objectives, ultimately without human intervention.
Those objectives could be as different as translating language, identifying faces, or even playing chess.
The type of AI that is exceptionally good at completing these objectives is often referred to as narrow AI. A good example is a chess-playing AI. This is specifically designed to play chess—and is extremely good at it—but completely useless at other tasks.
On the other hand is general AI. This is AI that it is said will replace human intelligence in most if not all tasks. This is still a long way off but remains the ultimate goal of some AI developers.
Yet it is this idea of general AI that drives many of the fears and misconceptions that surround AI.
Responding to these fears and a number of very real problems with narrow AI, the OECD recommendations are the latest of a number of projects and guidelines from governments and other bodies around the world that seek to instil an ethical approach to developing AI.
