What Can AI Experts Learn from Buddhism? A New Approach to Machine-Learning Ethics Aims to Find Out

Rapid advances in AI have spawned a number of recent initiatives that aim to convince engineers, programmers, and others to prioritize ethical considerations in their work--but almost all of them have originated in rich Western countries. An effort from the huge engineering association IEEE is now trying to change that, with its own AI ethics proposal that it says will be a global, multilingual collaboration. In the past two years alone, a raft of new efforts to explore ethics in AI have launched, including the Elon Musk–backed nonprofit OpenAI, the corporate alliance Partnership on AI, Carnegie Mellon University's AI ethics research center, and the Ethics & Society research unit at Google's AI subsidiary DeepMind. But most of these projects are based in the U.S. or U.K., are led by a small group of researchers, and issue updates only in English, which could limit their ability to foster AI that benefits all of humanity, not just those in developed countries. Since 2016, a group called the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems has been writing a document called "Ethically Aligned Design" that recommends societal and policy guidelines for technologies such as chatbots and home robots. This week, the group unveiled an updated version of the document that integrates feedback from people in East Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and other regions.