Facebook funds AI ethics center in Munich DW 20.01.2019

Facebook announced on Sunday that it will help create an independent ethics research center for artificial intelligence (AI) with the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The technology giant said it will provide $7.5 million over five years as "an initial funding grant." With the AI industry growing at unprecedented levels, its use and impact have come under increased scrutiny, with some experts warning of the potential for unexpected consequences from its application. Technology companies, including Facebook and Google, have come under significant pressure from governments and research institutes to do more to protect people affected by AI applications. "From Facebook potentially inciting ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, to Cambridge Analytica seeking to manipulate elections, to Google building a secret censored search engine for the Chinese, to anger over Microsoft contracts with (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to multiple worker uprisings over conditions in Amazon's algorithmically managed warehouses -- the headlines haven't stopped," said New York-based research institute AI Now last month.