Policy challenges of artificial intelligence

As Harvard University economist Jason Furman said when he was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, our biggest worry about AI should be that there might not be enough of it. The United States needs to develop this powerful new technology to its fullest to maintain our economic and technological leadership in the face of increasingly sophisticated competition from China, which has made AI-development a strategic priority. Of course, AI is fraught with ethical challenges. In the course on AI and Ethics I teach at Georgetown University, I find the students concerned that AI will be a biased, unaccountable force in their lives and that it will be deployed to create joblessness and exacerbate social and economic inequality. The trade association I work for, the Software & Information Industry Association, addressed these challenges in its recent publication on ethical principles for developers and users of AI.