AI gatekeepers are taking baby steps toward raising ethical standards

For years, Brent Hecht, an associate professor at Northwestern University who studies AI ethics, felt like a voice crying in the wilderness. When he entered the field in 2008, "I recall just agonizing about how to get people to understand and be interested and get a sense of how powerful some of the risks [of AI research] could be," he says. To be sure, Hecht wasn't--and isn't--the only academic studying the societal impacts of AI. But the group is small. "In terms of responsible AI, it is a sideshow for most institutions," Hecht says.