The biggest barrier to humane, ethical AI: Capitalism itself

But while these voices are getting louder, they still butt up against systems of power that value profit and the status quo over ensuring that AI is built in a way that isn't harmful to marginalized people and society writ large. In a panel discussion for Fast Company's 2020 Innovation Festival, experts in ethical AI explained what they're up against in trying to change the way that large companies and institutions think about building and deploying AI. For Timnit Gebru, the technical colead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team at Google, one challenge is that she has to work against the incentive structures inherent to capitalism. For publicly traded companies such as Google, constantly increasing profit is the highest good. "You can't set up a system where the only incentive is to make more money and then just assume that people are going to magically be ethical," she said.