A.I. Ethics Boards Should Be Based on Human Rights
Who should be on the ethics board of a tech company that’s in the business of artificial intelligence (A.I.)? Given the attention to the devastating failure of Google’s proposed Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC) earlier this year, which was announced and then canceled within a week, it’s crucial to get to the bottom of this question. Google, for one, admitted it’s “going back to the drawing board.”
Tech companies are realizing that artificial intelligence changes power dynamics and as providers of A.I. and machine learning systems, they should proactively consider the ethical impacts of their inventions. That’s why they’re publishing vision documents like “Principles for A.I.” when they haven’t done anything comparable for previous technologies. (Google never published a “Principles for Web Search.”) But what version of ethics should they choose? Ethical norms, principles, and judgments differ between time, place, and culture, and might be irreconcilable even within local communities. There’s so much disagreement that red lines aren’t even easily drawn around truly alarming A.I. applications, like lethal autonomous weapons and government scoring systems such as the one China is experimenting with.
Further complications arise because businesses, unlike individuals or governments, are accountable to shareholders. Fulfilling their fiduciary obligations can mean prioritizing growth, emphasizing profit, and working with international clients whose political allegiances vary along the democratic-authoritarian continuum.
This has led, understandably, to skepticism about the sincerity of corporate ethics. Whenever tech companies talk about ethics, critics worry that it’s a strategy for avoiding stronger government regulations and gaining goodwill, consisting of empty slogans followed by minimal legal compliance. Hence, when tech companies establish external A.I. ethics boards, they’ll probably be viewed as self-serving, “ethics washing” facades.
The cynicism is often justified. After all, these companies tout transparency but promote “trade language that prevents it,” are accusedof supporting A.I. ethics researchers who don’t always disclose their corporate funding, and, in one prominent case, keep the composition of an ethics board shrouded in secrecy. If tech companies want to create meaningful ethical practices, they need to invite the right people to their ethics boards and empower these folks to make publicly available recommendations that hold businesses accountable to transparent standards.
Through design decisions, implementation strategies, and unintended consequences, A.I. has the potential to impact lives across the globe. In military, law enforcement, banking, criminal justice, employment, and even product delivery contexts, algorithmic systems can threaten human rights by automating discrimination, chilling public speech and assembly, and limiting access to information.
Recognizing these problems, leading frameworks for A.I. governance base their approach on human rights, including the European Commission’s Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy A.I., the Organisation for Economic Co-operations and Development’s Principles on A.I., Business for Social Responsibility’s A.I.: A Rights-Based Blueprint for Business, Data and Society’s Governing A.I.: Upholding Human Rights and Dignity, and Access Now’s Human Rights in the Age of A.I.
Human rights are imperfect ideals, subject to conflicting interpretations, and embedded in agendas with “outsized expectations.” Though supposedly global, human rights aren’t honored everywhere. Nevertheless, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the best statement ever crafted for establishing all-around social and legal equality and fundamental individual freedoms. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers rightly notes that human rights are a viable benchmark, even among diverse ethical traditions.
