ETHICAL
ISSUES IN USING AI - ETHICS
News: Create global framework for ethical
use of AI: PM
What's
in the news?
●
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for a
global framework to ensure the ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) as
he flagged concerns over algorithmic bias and its disruptive impact on society.
Ethics
of Artificial Intelligence:
●
The notion of “artificial intelligence”
(AI) is understood broadly as any kind of artificial computational system that
shows intelligent behaviour, complex behaviour that is conducive to reaching
goals.
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Striving to achieve goals requires AI
systems to make decisions which impact human lives.
○
E.g., Autonomous cars. Taking such
decisions requires rational as well as emotional understanding of how humans
think and what are the values they base their decision on.
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AI ethics is a system of moral principles
and techniques intended to help this system take informed decisions ethically
acceptable along with being logically optimal.
Ethical
issues associated with AI:
1.
Privacy and Surveillance:
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The advancement of AI amplifies the common
issues of Data theft, Data surveillance, privacy, profiling.
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For example, Facial recognition in photos
and videos using AI-based image processing will aid profiling and searching for
individuals.
2.
Biased outcomes:
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The data used to feed AI systems isn’t
representative of the diversity of our societies, producing outcomes that can
be said to be discriminatory.
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For example, AI systems that rely on
Machine learning techniques will extract patterns from a given dataset. These
patterns mimic human biases such as gender bias, racial bias.
3.
Automation and unemployment:
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AI promises to automate a large section of
the job market.
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Some experts suggest that the large scale
advent of AI will generate newer kinds of jobs, but how much it will be able to
compensate remains to be seen.
4.
Singularity:
●
The idea of singularity is that if the
trajectory of artificial intelligence reaches up to systems that have a human
level of intelligence, then these systems would themselves have the ability to
develop AI systems that surpass the human level of intelligence i.e. they are
“superintelligent”
Principles
for Ethical Use of AI:
To overcome evolving
challenges of AI, 193 countries at UNESCO have collectively finalized the
following design principles for ethical use of AI.
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The choice to use AI systems and which AI
method to use should be proportional to achieve a given legitimate aim, should not infringe upon human rights and should be
based on rigorous scientific foundations.
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The continuous
assessment of the human, social, cultural, economic and environmental
impact of AI technologies should be carried out.
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Ensure that it is always possible to
attribute ethical and legal
responsibility for any stage of the life cycle of AI systems, as well as in
cases of remedy related to AI systems, to physical persons or to existing legal
entities.
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Participation
of different stakeholders throughout the AI system life cycle
is necessary for inclusive approaches to AI governance, enabling the benefits
to be shared by all, and to contribute to its sustainable development.
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Ban
on social scoring and mass surveillance.