Deep learning pioneer Fei-Fei Li on the fundamentals of ethical AI

Business and IT leaders grappling with how to build an enterprise AI program that is effective and ethical might want take a page from the AI pioneers who invented the technology that sparked the current AI boom: It's not about the tool set. Rather than starting with the goal of building better tools, they began by identifying the kinds of data sets they believed would drive the evolution of better algorithms and techniques. The data sets needed for businesses to create an ethical AI program are no doubt more nuanced and more nebulous than those that drive better AI tools -- in large part because it's unclear what constitutes ethical AI. Still, the approaches used by the world's leading experts to improve AI probably trump simplistic boardroom notions about good vs. bad AI. At the EmTech Digital conference in San Francisco, AI experts from Stanford and Microsoft elaborated on their methods for developing AI that's designed to have a positive rather than a negative impact on the people, processes and organizations it touches.