What is Responsible AI and why we should care
AI is the latest technology fad taking over the world. No matter where you look, you will see AI making waves. AI has been slowly creeping into our daily lives, we’ve become accustomed to the search suggestions on Google, video recommendations on TikTok, chatbots when making our routine appointments and audio assistants like Siri. But AI is now reaching into territory which we once thought only humans could master, creativity. Creative industries far and wide are getting disrupted by the effects of AI, as generative AI like Dall-E and Midjourney make it easy to dream up images, videos or scripts with no more than a few short text prompts. What once took weeks with the help of a professional can now be done in a span of minutes with the right prompts.
People are fearful of AI, and rightly so. For many people, it is threatening the very foundations of which their livelihood depends on. Opinions are divided into roughly two main camps, those who are against AI and those who support AI. I am sure there are plenty of articles on these topics, so I won’t dive into it here. But I do want to bring to everyone’s attention that AI is not all bad, and there are people working hard to guide the development of AI in the right direction. This is not the answer to all the problems we are facing, but it can play a part in deciding which camp to go for. This work can be broadly described as something called Responsible AI.
What is Responsible AI?
Responsible AI is a set of principles and practices that guide the development and use of AI in a way that is beneficial to society and avoids harm. Responsible AI follows a few key principles:
- Fairness: AI should not discriminate against individuals or groups based on race, gender, religion or any other characteristic.
- Accountability: There should always be a way to trace back the decisions made by an AI to the data or algorithms used to train them
- Transparency: It should be possible to understand the decision-making process the AI uses to make decisions
- Privacy: The AI system should not collect or use personal data without consent
- Safety: AI should not pose a risk to individuals or society
- Sustainability: Running these AI systems should not have a significant impact on the environment
It’s quite obvious some of these principles apply to any kind of technology or professional entity in general. There are a few additional principles like Accountability and Transparency that have a greater meaning in the context of AI. Current AI systems operate like a black box, nobody really knows how the AI makes these decisions. It makes it really difficult to hold someone accountable for any action the AI might take (the popular example is infringing on copyright). This is especially true nowadays when AI systems are no longer run by a single person, often involving multiple organisations being responsible for different parts of the AI system. The lack of accountability and transparency in AI systems is what is prompting a lot of legal action on AI companies for inability to control their AI systems and stop them from breaking the law.
Why should we care?
Whether we like AI or not, it is not likely to go away anytime soon. It’s been gathering momentum in a lot of different fields, and is now making waves in the legal minefield that is the creative industry. Give it another few years, and we’ll find AI taking over more of our daily lives. On the other hand, while the rules and regulations of the technology are still in its infancy, we have more influence in the direction these technologies can take. A lot of the companies jumping onto the bandwagon are motivated by profit, but they aren’t unshakeable. The conscious consumer can make a huge impact in how the companies operate. Take for example the sustainability movement. In recent years, consumers have become more conscious of the impacts their decisions are making on the environment and have begun demanding that companies do more for the environment. 20 years ago it was rare to see any sign that any product would make any consideration for the environment. Nowadays, recycling is a fad. Cruelty-free, vegan-friendly and recyclable are great tags to find on your product. This demonstrates the power of consumers. We can do the same for AI, we can guide companies to create Responsible AI through our demands.
Find out more
Here are a few resources if you want to learn more about Responsible AI and what some companies are doing:
- https://ai.google/responsibility/responsible-ai-practices/
- https://www.responsible.ai/
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/responsible-ai
If you’re more of an audio person, we recently published a podcast where we talked about the topic with an academic who is part of the Responsible AI initiative. Find it on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
