Ethics and Regulations

The Ethics of it. Researchers, policymakers, and executives should all be aware of the ethical implications of AI. When any company looks to introduce a new set of policies or processes, and in this case, technologies, ethics, and regulations considerations must take a front seat.

“Ethical questions revolve around consequences, in terms of different groups, sub groups, educational values and how AI systems might alter those values” (Zeid, 2019).

AI systems are complex in nature and include a variety of variables and for these reasons, it’s often difficult to know what is going on at every level. The very idea of AI is to have computers do things that the human brain typically does and because of this complexity, from an ethical standpoint, there can be some concern. (Zeid, 2019)

There are also a series of associated risks with implementing AI technologies:

Loss of jobs

Liability

Lack of transparency

Loss of human contact/lack of human connection

Loss of privacy

Loss of personal autonomy

Information Bias

Error proneness

Manipulations, Surveillance, Illegal behavior

While this list is not exhaustive, it gives you an idea of the time and energy that must go into mitigating each of these risks as a team looks to implement AI into their business or company.

Davenport and Ronaki (2018) polled businesses and executives for their article and those asked highlighted what they see as the top two challenges to AI, which have the potential to derail implementation initiatives: integration + cost. Integrating cognitive processes within existing systems, and related to this: buy-in from the necessary power players, poses an issue for successful implementation. Secondly, new technologies and expertise to implement these processes are costly.

A seemingly appropriate segue would be to assess any existing, proposed, or recommended regulations. According to the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (“The IEEE Global Initiative”), a primary goal of the initiative is to ensure that technologists are educated, trained, and empowered to prioritize ethical considerations in the design and development of autonomous and intelligent systems. (AI Governance, 2019)

Good AI governance requires that the right regulatory instrument be chosen for each ethical concern. Policy‑makers should consider the diverse nature of ethical concerns and work on the basis of a graded governance system for ethical concerns in AI and autonomous systems to determine the appropriate content and technique for regulation. (AI Governance, 2019