Using AI ethically to tackle covid-19

Taking a principled approach is crucial to the successful use of AI in pandemic management, say Stephen Cave and colleagues In a crisis such as the covid-19 pandemic, governments and health services must act quickly and decisively to stop the spread of the disease. Artificial intelligence (AI), which in this context largely means increasingly powerful data driven algorithms, can be an important part of that action—for example, by helping to track the progress of a virus or to prioritise scarce resources.1 To save lives it might be tempting to deploy these technologies at speed and scale. Deployment of AI can affect a wide range of fundamental values, however, such as autonomy, privacy, and fairness. AI is much more likely to be beneficial, even in urgent situations, if those commissioning, designing, and deploying it take a systematically ethical approach from the start. Ethics is about considering the potential harms and benefits of an action in a principled way. For a widely deployed technology, this will lay a foundation of trustworthiness on which to build. Ethical deployment requires consulting widely and openly; thinking deeply and broadly about potential impacts; and being transparent about goals being pursued, trade-offs being made, and values guiding these decisions. In a pandemic, such processes should be accelerated, but not abandoned. Otherwise, two main dangers arise: firstly, the benefits of the technology could be outweighed by harmful side effects, and secondly, public trust could be lost.2 The first danger is that the potential benefits increase the incentive to deploy AI systems rapidly and at scale, but also increase the importance of an ethical approach. The speed of development limits the time available to test and assess a new technology, while the scale of deployment increases any negative consequences. Without forethought, this can lead to problems, such …