AI boosterism: a boon or a bane
Artificial Intelligence (AI) currently holds unprecedented power, influence and money. It has the capability to shape a country’s economy.
Google, Amazon, and Facebook spent record amounts to influence the US government in 2018. They poured a combined $48 million into lobbying last year — up 13 percent from 2017, according to new government disclosures.(Source : https://www.vox.com/2019/1/23/18194328/google-amazon-facebook-lobby-record)
All the good things AI have already done for society and often even attempt to argue that the social order would already have collapsed were it not for the “AI revolution.” This is usually followed by an “on the other hand” caution which tells of certain obstacles the introduction of AI brings in its wake. The threat posed to individual privacy by large data banks and the danger of large-scale lay-off provoked by the industrialization of AI is usually mentioned [1].
Though the work being done in AI is not limited to academics i.e., just publishing papers. Big tech giant companies are using AI to intervene in political elections and influence policy and regulations.
Facebook is to be fined £500,000, the maximum amount possible, for its part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the information commissioner has announced.
Standard justification
The boundary is getting thinner and thinner with every passing day, for AI as a model of the mind and AI as a surveillance tool. And one of the primary justification to do so is “If I don’t, somebody else will ”. Because who does not wanna be in News these days that too with an AI tag.
Another argument is to refuse the limitations, difficulties and harms as minor issues compared with the advantages and potential. With the knowledge, that AI (as a system) scrapes huge amounts of data, apologists may try to dismiss it as just a matter of targeted ads. How bad can it be? You can always ignore them.
The computer has from the beginning been a fundamentally conservative force … a force which kept power or even solidified power where it already existed [2] .
Adopting an AI solution rather than a more comprehensive approach to social issues remains widespread. Using AI for determining someone’s sexual orientation was not taken well by the media [3].
Computer experts share a common fantasy since ELIZA’s birth, that human thought is entirely computable, but in Computer Power and Human Reason, Weizenbaum explains:
Crucial differences between humans and machines, demonstrating that there are certain areas that require interpersonal connection, respect, affection, and understanding into which computers ought not to intrude, regardless of whether it appears they can.
No other organism, and certainly no computer, can be made to confront genuine human problems in human terms
Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, as a researcher in AI, we all should ask one question before incorporating AI to our platforms i.e., “Is this piece of tech needed in the first place?” If human being is our starting point and human welfare is the prime interest, the negative repercussions emerging from AI, as well as the lack of taking responsibility by researchers and developers, remains the most pressing ethical discussion in AI.
[1] Weizenbaum, Joseph. “On the Impact of the Computer on Society.” Science 176, no. 4035 (1972): 609–14. Accessed February 26, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/1734465.
[2] Joseph Weizenbaum’s 1985 interview with The Tech, an MIT News service.
Article Source : https://reallifemag.com/fair-warning/
