Till AI Do Us Part
Hi everyone!
I’m so excited to be back, out into the open, into the fresh air *metaphorically speaking*, after the time spent mining, digging out and polishing the insights that — as I humbly hope — might provide some fresh variety to your information diet (see The Dietitians of Info-Sharing). A fuzzy medley of the weather where nature herself seems to be uncertain as to where it belongs, to winter or to spring, has finally tilted towards a warmer side. And, since I’m a big believer in the power of digits, 20/02/2020 looks like a special day, as well. You might wonder, what’s so special has happened? The news fed by AI in your gadgets have been arriving in monotonous chops, as usual, and …likely, you haven’t noticed anything particularly bright or uplifting in the feeds. And… that’s why yours truly is here!
Thing is, a certain development — which I’m about to render into a human speak for you — has been in the works for well over than a decade, although it might not seem that obvious on the surface. Ironically, the individuals who have stepped up with it have had little to do with how it all started. Are you intrigued enough by now? Curious to find out what I’m talking about? Great! Off goes the veil: the exciting new initiative that I’m alluding to has probably disguised itself as one more chunk of trouble for the tech workers. Because, likely, when you saw the headlines, the other day, which went on how the EU is going to regulate AI, over again, and since the EU has been painted as a scarecrow for progressive digital platforms, your face turned sour (because everyone knows what trouble GDPR was, and still is). However, the moment I saw the headline, which captured my attention because it had the word “ethics” in it — and namely “EU’s new AI rules will focus on ethics and transparency” — my mood has made a U-turn from going south!
And, similarly to what I did in The Pied Piper of Everywhere, let me give you a live demo of how a human being might reason if/when they deem it worth their mental/emotional/physical/*insert other adjective here* effort to single out something which means a lot to them on a personal level from any bit of information, be it a medieval tale or a news piece.
First off, I resonated with the word “ethics” in the headline, and, believe it or not, with the word “EU”. I’d hardly be inspired to click on if this same headline had the word “Facebook” in it instead of “EU”, and I guess you know why (in short, everyone has become skeptical of the Facebook’s capabilities to be ethical, no matter what they have been proclaiming publicly). This headline had some freshness in it, so I clicked, and started reading.
Next on — and I’ll cite and highlight the bits that stood out to me, in the article:
The European Union is set to release new regulations for artificial intelligence that are expected to focus on transparency and oversight as the region seeks to differentiate its approach from those of the United States and China.
Aha. So, basically, what the EU is saying, I reasoned — oh, and don’t forget the image. The way Margrethe Vestager regards whoever she’s talking to… speaks volumes, and here’s what this image implies: “Well, boys. Enough is enough.”
- *and by “boys” I mean the big tech. And not only the big tech boys, but those boys, and on some occasion girls, who “move fast and break things”… and the one positive development they leave after themselves except the total mess is a job opportunity for the cleaning ladies (see To Glass Cliff Walkers With Love). Or, for the modern Gentlemen of the Stool. *
Back to what the image implies: “Well, boys and girls. Enough is enough. We’ve been watching you closely for well over than a decade, hoping that you’ll have finally sorted your businesses out in such a way so that the data that we allow you to collect from the European citizens — and it’s our duty to protect them from all sorts of consumer hazards — be used in an ethical and transparent way. However, despite our good will, it appears that you lack the managerial, engineering and ethical competence to do just that (see (Not) My Circus, (Not) My Monkeys?), so it’s time that we take the reins back into our own hands. You might apologize all you want, and you might make the words such as “everyone makes mistakes” your mantra, and repeat those words, and your apologies, but this is not helping. Admitting a mistake and uttering an apology do not provide a sufficient ground for escaping accountability and for never-ending forgiveness, especially since we’re dealing with people’s health, lives, hearts, and souls here. What you’ve been doing, for well over than a decade: you’ve been running a lab test, an experiment, which has never been acknowledged as such by the nation where your businesses reside. And, since your home nation seems to be too slow and reluctant in taking a decisive action and making you responsible, it’s time for us to step in. The time of reckoning has come. We’re going to kick you out of the game, boys, and this time… there’s no “if’s” or “but’s”.
Heh, no wonder that the said boys flocked to Brussels to court the EU officials last week (or early this week). What’s funny, they even attempted to take on a stance of the game changers themselves, by dealing the old card of “we need more regulations, etc.”
Next is, that’s where we get to the juicy part. In fact, this is the part that has factored in most into my excitement about the news. Again, note the highlights:
“Vestager noted that companies outside the EU that want to deploy their tech in Europe might need to take steps like retraining facial recognition features using European data sets (!). The rules will cover such use cases as autonomous vehicles and biometric IDs.
But the proposal features carrots as well as sticks. The EU will propose spending almost $22 billion annually to build new data ecosystems that can serve as the basis for AI development (!!!). The plan assumes Europe has a wealth of government and industrial data (!!!), and it wants to provide regulatory and financial incentives to pool that data, which would then be available to AI developers who agree to abide by EU regulations.”
And, next one:
… the EU wants to amass data gathered in such sectors as manufacturing, transportation, energy, and health care that can be leveraged to develop AI for the public good and to accelerate Europe’s own startups (!!!!).
Do you share my excitement now? The whole deal basically says: we’re opening up the New Eldorado, the new gold mines, for the European AI start-ups! There’s no more reason to think of Europe as “lagging behind” the US in terms of digital progressiveness (which would be a rather questionable assumption, I’d say)! Another EU official, cited in the article, puts it bluntly: “The United States [has] lost much of [its] industrial know-how in the last phase of globalisation.” And, what this person implies by this “industrial know-how” phrase is pretty much the same as what I imply by “managerial, engineering and ethical competence” in (Not) My Circus, (Not) My Monkeys?
However… this wouldn’t be exactly the New Eldorado of the “Wild Wild West” kind. The EU regulators seem to be set on starting a revolutionary new way of doing tech business, something I’d call “a conservative, back-to-sanity revolution” in the most positive sense of the word. Probably, with the EU, the first thing that comes to mind is bureaucracy, and the officials have acknowledged that they will want to be especially careful so as to not “over-regulate” things (if you will, here’s a reporting piece which went out after the EU authorities announced the initiative they dubbed “A Europe fit for the Digital Age” yesterday).
And, that’s where we get to this very “meaningful to me on a personal level” point, the landmark from where this whole analysis has originated:
Over the many years, the issues around the managerial and ethical competence have become very sensitive to me (see Beware Flat Hierarchy; Tides, Lambs, and Technology as well as the other pieces tagged “Leadership” in the Q-Blog), for a number of reasons. And, I’d say that my frustration with the way I’ve seen them handled has spilled out most intensely in Dreaming Into 2020. If we get to the root causes of all the AI-related trouble and mess, in the US, in Europe, and globally, here’s where we get at: the managerial and the ethical competence. And, here’s another area where they’re about to inflict a large mess (and more work for the modern Gentlemen of the Stool): the drones and the air-taxies (I referred to this whole drones thing development as another promising case of “long-term dumbness” in (Not) My Circus, (Not) My Monkeys?, the first one being AI). There’s much talk of leadership, and soft skills, and ethics, and people and culture in tech these days. I applaud the talk effort. However, for all of the intent behind those initiatives, it seems that tech as “tech” simply is not enough to educate the executives/leaders/managers as the wise sages who will hold themselves personally accountable to what their businesses do to the community, to the public, as well as…. to their own employees. And, fortunately or not, some of them have admitted to the need for regulation (as the Facebook’s and Tesla’s chiefs did).
Here’s an historical anecdote about leadership (and I’ve cited some other anecdotes in my previous articles, as you might recall, e.g. see Decision-Making and Rusty Tin Man, or Commander’s Intent and Trust):
The year is 1831, and there are cholera riots in Russia. [For the record, the 19th century saw several cholera pandemics, and there were outbreaks of cholera in Great Britain, in Germany, as well as in other European countries. In fact, Edward Tufte, the data visualization guru, makes a reference to cholera outbreaks in London in his works.] And, the whole capital city of St. Petersburg is quarantined. The gentry have flown to their country estates, and the royal family have been staying out of town, too. St. Petersburg was a scary place were people went so mad from the deaths that they were raiding hospitals and killing doctors. Some decisive action had to be taken by the country leader: Emperor Nicholas I. Whenever I see courage, I applaud it, no matter who I see it coming from. Unfortunately, no source in English is available, but the readers who speak Russian and/or French might want to check this reference out. Thing is, the whole civilized world was using mercury as a remedy from cholera back in those days. In some cases, the mercury helped (because it’s a highly poisonous substance as we know from where we stand in the 21st century), and in some it didn’t. So, what this Emperor does: he goes straight into the mid of the outraged crowd of rebels, grabs a flask of mercury from one of the rioters and… makes a move to drink it. Just to show to the populace that he is not afraid to risk his own life, and to prove that the medicine is safe, and the doctors have no intent of poisoning them. And, despite the outcries from his French-speaking doctor who is nearby… Nicholas drinks the mercury. And the crowd is awed, and the city is pacified.
So, my question to those who identify themselves as tech leaders: everyone is eager to drink a glass of celebratory champagne. However, are you capable of drinking the mercury, to save your company, your business, your reputation? Risk your life to comfort the people that have trusted themselves into your leadership? Are you ready to be responsible and accountable for what your business is doing, and for the way you treat your employees? And, yes, I’m lobbying my humanity agenda in human-speak way (because it seems the way they teach humanities at some high-fly educational establishments has little to do with human speak). No wonder many regard humanities as some boring stuff that has little to do with the realities of life.
And, no matter how hard I scrape my memory storage… looks like there’s no anecdote available that would speak of the courage of the modern “tech leaders”. Maybe they haven’t yet had a chance to showcase it? Or, maybe those leaders are already drinking their mercury… but quietly, to themselves, after what EU is going to do to them *ironic*.
In fact… there can be a way by which tech leaders can act nobly. If you’re not particularly inspired by the anecdotes about emperors and cholera riots, here’s another story that comes to my mind. Fast forward to 2000. Erin Brockovich, the film. Some people I’ve known before must remember me citing this film as one of my favourites, if not the most favorite of all times. It is based on a true story, and — with the brilliant acting work by Julia Roberts — it has always been an inspiration to me. In short, Erin Brockovich is a narrative of how a chemical corporation was brought to accountability, by a class-action lawsuit through a gargantuan personal effort and courage from the protagonist (portrayed by Julia Roberts) who inspired and encouraged hundreds of people to seek justice. Why am I recalling this film now? There’s one tech CEO who seems to act as if he holds himself accountable for the world’s troubles. [Although, some might argue that this would not necessarily be the case.] I’m talking about Jeff Bezos’ pledge of $10bn to save the Earth’s environment. After all, maybe there’s no need to drink mercury these days. This tech leader — and there’s no irony this time, because Mr. Bezos does act like a responsible and ethical leader, despite the fact that everyone seems to be into bad-mouthing him these days — is giving away the amount that might be equal to a class-action lawsuit pay out, and he’s doing this without being sued.
Ehm.. and what is this about Jeff Bezos, that makes him a person, a leader that he is? The only answer that I have is that… he’s someone who’s been educated in the times that had come prior to the era that they coined as the “times of dumbing down”.
All right. I’ll soften my story up, and — in my own effort to contribute to educating the leaders/executives/managers who would be guarded by ethics and soft skills and what not, I’ll give a couple of book recommendations. Consider them your shortcut to a full-scale course in humanities, or in.. well, what they call “soft skills”.
- The Essays by Michel de Montaigne (I’m so happy for you if you speak French). You’ll be surprised as to how engaging this read is (and don’t let yourself be misguided by the dry annotation in Wikipedia, should you be willing to check it out).
- The Spirit of The Laws by Montesquieu (again, I’m so happy if you speak French, because Amazon Kindle will let you have this priceless book for free in that language). The breadth and the magnitude of this man’s thinking never stop to fascinate me, especially since many of his ideas, and the situations he’s speaking of can be extrapolated to the times we live in. And, once we do the extrapolation, we’re in a position to learn from the book, and from the wise thinker, and to use this wisdom to our own as well as to a greater good. Well, at least, we might be inspired to act more responsibly as… whoever we identify ourselves with :)
Further reading/watching:
Why GDPR Is Still Creating Problems In The Enterprise
The rise and fall of Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes
The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World
Brussels pushes back on Zuckerberg pitch
Europe sets out plan to boost data reuse and regulate ‘high risk’ AIs
Aircraft, Big and Small, Are Changing Our Relationship With Flight
Elon Musk says all advanced AI development should be regulated, including at Tesla
John Snow’s data journalism: the cholera map that changed the world
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos pledges $10bn to save Earth’s environment
The Essays by Michel de Montaigne
The Spirit of The Laws by Montesquieu
Related:
Better The Devil That You Don’t Know
The Dietitians of Info-Sharing
To Glass Cliff Walkers With Love
