Why you should worry about the ethics of artificial intelligence?

The discriminatory biases of the algorithms, the invasion of privacy, the risks of facial recognition and the regulation of human-machine relations are challenges that AI needs to face. However, the interests of governments and large companies often prevail over good practices.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a science fiction thing, it is everywhere. Your bank uses it to know if it is going to give you a credit or not and the ads you see on your social networks come out of a classification carried out by an algorithm, which has microsegmented and ‘decided’ if it shows you offers of wrinkle creams or high-end cars. Facial recognition systems, which use airports and security forces, are also based on this technology.

“The machines do not have a generalist intelligence, nor have we achieved that they have common sense, but they do have specific intelligences for very specific tasks, which exceed the efficiency of human intelligence,” explains Sinc Carles Sierra, director of the Research Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IIIA) of the CSIC.

Therefore — he adds — “AI has enormous potential in the improvement of industrial processes, the design of new medicines or to achieve greater precision in medical diagnosis, to name a few examples.”