
Why we should put AI into public hands
German version published at https://t3n.de/news/kuenstliche-intelligenz-gesellschaft-1104871/
„He is a horrible tenant! He never washes the dishes or at least vacuums a bit and the last month he even forgot to pay the rent in time“ My hair dresser couldn’t stop moaning about her co-tenant and I saw myself thinking about the time when I experienced the same as a student living the 10 of us in a house. „that is nothing in comparison to my co-tenants“ I replied. Just last week one of them threw his food on the ground, smiled at me and started singing! No attempt to clean up the mess!“ My hair dresser stopped cutting and looked a bit puzzled. After a long moment she understood my humor — I was talking about my 3 year old son.
I always think it is amazing how forgiving we are with (our) kids. We explain them again and again how an appropriate action would be, how words are pronounced and what they mean, how things work. Parents do that for years to train their kids, prepare them for real life. Sometimes I wonder why we invest all that time in them. Is it pure gens? Is it that idea of the next me / us? Is it the hope not to be alone later in life? You might wonder why I am talking about parenthood in the context of digital business.
Well, recently I discovered, that I have many more than 2 kids. „can you please put off the light?“ — „sorry I didn’t understand you“ „ can … you … please … put …“ „Hello, how can I help you?“. Speech recognition and the artificial intelligence in the background have a lot in common with kids. Actually that is their core idea. Learning systems. Someone has to train them for real life — and that is us, with kind of the same forgivingness and persistency we have with our kids. And as we all are training the same kiddo, this kids becomes an adult much earlier than the usual 18 years. We can expect adult like systems within the next years, due to our joined effort to train them.
And that makes me ask a simple question: why do we invest all this time and effort into systems and models, which belong to Apple, Amazon, Google, IBM and co? Who made us adopt these systems like cuckoo eggs and educate them in how an appropriate action would be, how words are pronounced and what they mean, how things work? Shouldn’t the resulting artificial intelligence be owned by ourselves? It’s not only the time we spend, it is also the Data and knowledge we provide, our intelligence. Our data is protected, our intelligence is owned by Amazon or IBM? At the AsiaCCS 18 in South Korea, IBM already presented ways to mark AI models with watermarks to be able to protect them.
It is about time for Non Profit Organizations such as the Mozilla Foundation or the Wikipedia Foundation to design AI platforms which are public domains, accessible and usable for all of us — the ones who actually donor their intelligence to make those systems „smart“. The platform could enable private AIs and we as owners could decide how and with whom those AIs could connect into („social“) AI networks. In contrast to unified AI systems designed by corporations such as IBM, this system of public and private AIs could guarantee the diversity, accessibility and transparency of intelligence we need in an evolving democratic society .
Wouldn’t it be great to have access to your own personal AI? It would have a much slower learning curve, as it would be „raised“ only by you and a selected set of co-trainers, but it would be designed around your context, your belief system, your values, it could help others — humans or their private artificial intelligence. An AI system trustworthy enough to prepare, predict and maybe even make decisions on your behalf. A key future technology owned by the society — us.
Such a personal AI could also foster the hope to be less alone when you get old, as it could have a totally different personal focus then privately owned AIs. Imagine your private artificial intelligence as a buddy later on in life, one you can talk about things in the past, one who shares old pictures with you, reminds you of dear old friends and knows which kind of music you loved back in the days. Maybe even your kids could have a chat with your private artificial intelligence once you past away? The private artificial intelligence would be an additional kiddo, not replacing your real ones, but a wonderful extension.
So let’s put artificial intelligence into public hands! let’s fight for the diversity, accessibility and transparency of Artificial Intelligence!

