How does society create an ethics guide for AI?
Coined the fourth industrial revolution, the advancement of artificial intelligence and machine learning brings interesting discussion to the table. Because AI is so comprehensive and covers several industries, we find ourselves asking obscure questions such as “Do we need to legalize predictive AI policing?” or “How do we iron out biases from algorithms that determine job promotions?”
With these questions arising, the key one that remains unanswered surrounds ethics. How do we ensure that AI technologies are ethically designed?
To answer this question, there are essentially four aspects that dictate the result: the dilemma, the impact, adoption, and institutionalization. These components formulate what is considered ethical because it shows who is onboard, how everyone supports ethics, how we recognize the ethics, and, most importantly, why we trust these ethics.
Recognizing the dilemmas that AI can pose is the first building block of developing an ethics guideline. It wasn’t too long ago the automotive industry faced global backlash for the issue of life and death with self-driving cars. The world learned that moral choices are not universal and the outcomes of difficult situations fall into the hands of those who built the machine. As autonomous vehicles will be part of the future of the automotive industry, it becomes necessary for governments to address the potential impacts of these vehicles on the road. As an example, NCSL provides real-time data about state autonomous vehicle legislation in the USA.
This same concept can be applied to artificial intelligence. Looking at it from a larger scope, the main problem with AI lies within its thinking and learning capabilities. Machines do not think like humans because they don’t have personal judgments. Machines are built on a program and only think about how they are told to think. The challenge around using unsupervised, semi-supervised, or supervised data is what data we include or exclude, how written algorithms impact outcomes, and determining our guide to train the data and make a judgment. See what the dilemma is?
After this dilemma we need to focus on the impact AI ethics can have on businesses, consumers, organizations, and governing bodies. By pushing out guidelines, existing AI that is not compliant with those standards will have to be reconfigured. This creates two issues:
We have learned a lot through industrial revolutions around basic human rights and social values. While companies can set up committees to form rule-based algorithmic models, this usually protects the organizations and may allow unethical conduct. It is essential to have a discussion around the application of AI ethics in law to the well-functionality of society.
Take a look at the EU ethics guideline on trustworthy AI that rolled out this year.
