It's time to start some serious research into the ethics of AI

The ethical issues swirling around artificial intelligence (AI) are under-researched, with surprisingly little serious academic investigation into AI ethics, despite the huge amount of money pouring into the field and the rampant pace at which the technology is advancing. "I had hoped to be here today and tell you about the wealth of scientific research that's being done on ethics and AI. Because we found very little," Maria de Kleijn-Lloyd, Elsevier's senior vice president of analytical services told a Science Business conference earlier this month. "There is a lot of discourse on ethics in AI," said de Kleijn-Lloyd. But in terms of academia's two-thousand year tradition of rigorous ethical inquiry, when it comes to AI, "we haven't really joined the two up," she said.