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Thursday, May 27, 2021

How Adobe’s Ethics Committee Helps Manage AI Bias

Jared Council
The Wall Street Journal
Originally posted 5 May 21

Review boards can help companies mitigate some of the risks associated with using artificial intelligence, according to Adobe Inc. executive Dana Rao.

Mr. Rao, Adobe’s general counsel, said one of the top risks in using AI systems is that the technology can perpetuate harmful bias against certain demographics, based on what it learns from data. Ethics committees can be one way of managing those risks and putting organizational values into practice.

Adobe’s AI ethics committee, launched two years ago, has been able to review new features for potential bias before those features are deployed, Mr. Rao said Wednesday at The Wall Street Journal’s Risk & Compliance Forum. The committee is made up of employees of various ethnicities and genders from different parts of the company, including legal, government relations and marketing.

“It takes a lot of people across your company to help figure this out,” he said. “Sometimes we might look at it and say there’s not an issue here,” he said, but getting a diverse group of people together can help identify issues product developers might miss.