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Thursday, May 30, 2019

How Big Tech is struggling with the ethics of AI

Madhumita Murgia & Siddarth Shrkianth
Financial Times
Originally posted April 28, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

The development and application of AI is causing huge divisions both inside and outside tech companies, and Google is not alone in struggling to find an ethical approach.

The companies that are leading research into AI in the US and China, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Baidu, SenseTime and Tencent, have taken very different approaches to AI and to whether to develop technology that can ultimately be used for military and surveillance purposes.

For instance, Google has said it will not sell facial recognition services to governments, while Amazon and Microsoft both do so. They have also been attacked for the algorithmic bias of their programmes, where computers inadvertently propagate bias through unfair or corrupt data inputs.

In response to criticism not only from campaigners and academics but also their own staff, companies have begun to self-regulate by trying to set up their own “AI ethics” initiatives that perform roles ranging from academic research — as in the case of Google-owned DeepMind’s Ethics and Society division — to formulating guidelines and convening external oversight panels.

The info is here.