AI and Ethics: A Reflection

In the last week or so, we had two guest speakers come into class: 

Yonah Welker, to talk about AI Ethics, and 

Heather MacKinnon, to talk about AI within Microsoft. 

Microsoft in Vancouver. Photo by Matthew Manuel.

Here's some of my thoughts and reflections on what I learned from those two sessions. 

1. The legal side of ethics is hard. 

According to Heather, anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of the time spent on each project is either in legal, clearing the ethical requirements of a project (and ensuring it didn't violate any of Microsoft's ethics framework) or in data masking. I learned that it is perfectly legal to take images and data off the internet for the purposes of training ML models - but it is very illegal to tie PII (Personally Identifiable Information) into that. 

2. There is no field where AI can't be used. 

While the technology industry is often where one will first think of when they think "AI", the truth is AI is used in pretty much every industry today. Even if it's not used directly, Heather pointed out that every company needs physical components (even if it's something as mundane as a desk to work on), and the supply chain behind manufacturing that certainly uses AI. As a result, AI is a part of all of our lives - indirectly or directly. 

The exception of course is if you've never used any technology in your life... but that's becoming rarer and rarer nowadays. 

On a lighter note, Warner Bros and Microsoft have used AI to recreate a real-life version of Looney Tunes! It combines lots of emerging technologies together - augmented reality, cloud vision, synthetic speech, etc. - and they all use AI one way or another. 

Here's an interesting fact: According to Microsoft, it only takes as few as 500 words nowadays to create a fully customized AI-powered speech synthesis voice. I never would have thought of it being that low!

3. We've come a long way, but there's still a lot more to go. 

Sounds pretty cliché, but it's certainly not wrong. Today, more or less all of the major tech companies have established ethical frameworks detailing exactly what they will or will not do regarding AI. However, legislation has yet to catch up, meaning that a smaller (and less well-intentioned) company can still swoop in on a project refused by larger companies and complete it despite potential ethical concerns. Yonah pointed out how tricky it is to set legislation in this area in his speech, with autonomous cars being a go-to example. If an autonomous car hits a pedestrian, who's the one to blame? The car owner? The manufacturer? The person responsible for writing the code? At the moment, we simply don't have one definitive "answer" to this. 

With how much AI is intertwined with our own lives nowadays, legislation will almost certainly catch up eventually - just perhaps not right now. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sustaining vs. Disruptive Technologies

Image
In Professor Clayton Christensen's book The Innovator's Dilemma , Christensen spends a lot of time talking about "sustaining technologies" versus "disruptive technologies". Both forms of innovation are good for society, but the two differ in one key way: whether said innovation "improves" (sustaining) or "revolutionizes" (disruptive).  We discussed this topic in our humanities class this week, comparing and contrasting the two. What are they, really?  Sustaining technologies improve upon an existing technology. Pfizer is commonly brought up as an example of this, as their main business model is developing new and improved drugs.  Disruptive technologies  disrupt an industry. They introduce technology that has never been seen before, or use it in ways never thought of before, such that a successful "disruptive" innovation will force existing companies to either adapt or die off. Netflix is a good example of a disruptive innovatio
Read more

Top Emerging Technologies

Image
Today, we'll take a look into emerging technologies.   Prompt: Come up with a list of 10 emerging technologies, and pick out three to go deeper in.  Source:  Unsplash Ten Emerging Technologies Not ranked in any particular order.  Satellite Internet  - The ability to access the internet from anywhere - even in places where fiber and broadband simply don't exist. Could be the key needed to connect rural communities together.  Cloud Technology - Removing the need to buy hardware, and the transition over to SaaS and IaaS (software as a service, infrastructure as a service) 3D Printing - We can already print medical grade components for some use cases. Gone are the days where our best 3D printers make sloppy, fragile plastic toys - 3D printing is rapidly evolving and will only continue to grow.  5G / Mobile Connectivity - At the moment, I honestly don't see much of a difference/improvement with 5G, and if anything more controversy than with previous cellular data generations. Ho
Read more

Digital Thinkers: Experiments of a Futurist

Image
 What is the job of an artist?  Photo by Anna Kolosyuk on Unsplash Is it to create? To inspire? To entertain?  What even is an "artist"?  I believe that the job of an artist encompasses all of these. Art provides comfort; it also provides a vessel to express innovation. Artists play a large part in shaping the future.  Art is not limited to just a physical medium. New technologies - like augmented and virtual reality - also provide mediums for expressing art. Art can be expressed in sound - I'd argue that music can certainly be considered art.   Rama Allen [see footnote] of The Mill defines Augmented Artists as "technologically enabled dreamers". Artists require having "aggressive curiosity" to succeed. To me, that means having the willingness to innovate and try new things, similar to inventors and designers. In a way, they're also artists per this definition.  Art and artists have always been defined by the tools available to make the work.  Ra
Read more