[Air-L] The ethics of artificial intelligence

[Michael T Zimmer]

Hi Jill - 

One group of scholars/practitioners in the US which is putting ethics up front in AI is the AI Now institute: https://ainowinstitute.org/

I discussed some of these efforts at the AoIR 2017 roundtable on "Artificial Intelligence and the Good Society” organized by Corinne Cath, with myself, Stine Lomborg, and Ben Zevenbergen. A summary  was published in Philosophy & Technology https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-018-0304-8

Michael

--
Michael Zimmer, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Information Studies
Director, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

e: zimmerm at uwm.edu
t: @michaelzimmer
w: www.michaelzimmer.org


> On Aug 6, 2018, at 6:43 AM, Jill Walker Rettberg <Jill.Walker.Rettberg at uib.no> wrote:
> 
> I have been asked to contribute to my university’s response to a call from the Norwegian research ethics committee for the natural sciences and technology (NENT) – they are working on ethical guidelines for research on artificial intelligence and machine learning. I think a lot of the discussions we've had about algorithmic cultures and bias at AoIR are very relevant to this, but that this is also perhaps a more fundamental question: what sort of AI research is ethical? What should be banned? What kinds of ethical considerations should be made? 
> 
> I am familiar with the debates about algorithmic culture and bias and the many excellent recent books discussing the impact of AI/algorithms/machine learning on society, including Taina Bucher’s If-Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics, Tarleton Gillespie’s Custodians of the Internet, Safiya Noble's Algorithms of Oppression, Virginia Eubanks' Automating Inequality, etc. I also know about FAT* (Fairness, Accountability and Transparency, e.g. https://fatconference.org), and  These are fabulous and clearly relevant to the question, but I am wondering if there is something even more specific to the actual tech development and research out there - or perhaps there are already lots of examples of ethical guidelines for AI research?. There is clearly a need for it - just today I heard a computer science professor saying that they do research on the methods that underlie the systems and so ethics isn't relevant. 
> 
> I have also seen that the EU is planning to develop a strategy for AI in 2019, and that they are positioning ethical considerations as central in that, at the same time as it's ultimately about being competitive globally of course. (https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/artificial-intelligence#useful-links)
> 
> If you're in Norway and interested in the topic, see https://www.etikkom.no/Aktuelt/Nyheter/2018/ber-om-innspill-om-kunstig-intelligens - they are asking for feedback and comments from everyone until 10 September. I assume other European countries have parallel processes that will feed into the EU strategy in 2019. Perhaps the US, China and other countries already have strategies?
> 
> Jill 
> 
> 
> Jill Walker Rettberg 
> Professor of Digital Culture
> University of Bergen
> http://jilltxt.net
> 
> 
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