AI experts question tech industry's ethical commitments

From healthcare and education to finance and policing, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly embedded in people's daily lives. Despite being posited by advocates as a dispassionate and fairer means of making decisions, free from the influence of human prejudice, the rapid development and deployment of AI has prompted concern over how the technology can be used and abused. These concerns include how it affects people's employment opportunities, its potential to enable mass surveillance, and its role in facilitating access to basic goods and services, among others. In response, the organisations that design, develop and deploy AI technologies – often with limited input from those most affected by its operation – have attempted to quell people's fears by setting out how they are approaching AI in a fair and ethical manner. Since around 2018, this has led to a deluge of ethical AI principles, guidelines, frameworks and declarations being published by both private organisations and government agencies around the world.