Chief Marketing Officer at Interactions, a conversational AI company, where he oversees all aspects of communications, sales and marketing. Let's face it: When a company develops artificial intelligence (AI) that can offer us a medical diagnosis, care for our elderly grandparents or autonomously drive a vehicle, ethics aren't the flashiest elements to focus on. It's tempting for companies to get caught up in the excitement of creating the latest cutting-edge technology and vow to sort out ethical considerations after the fact. That works just as well, right? Late last year, I had a conversation with Thomas Arnold, a research associate at Tufts' Human-Robot Interaction Lab, for my company's podcast.

A three-year effort by hundreds of engineers worldwide resulted in the publication in March of 2019 of Ethically Aligned Design (EAD) for Business, a guide for policymakers, engineers, designers, developers and corporations. The effort was headed by the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (A/IS), with John C. Havens as Executive Director, who spoke to AI Trends for an Executive Interview. We recently connected to ask how the effort has been going. EAD First Edition, a 290-page document which Havens refers to as "applied ethics," has seen some uptake, for example by IBM, which referred to the IEEE effort within their own resource called Everyday Ethics for AI The IBM document is 26 pages, easy to digest, structured into five areas of focus, each with recommended action steps and an example. The example for Accountability involved an AI team developing applications for a hotel.

Algorithmic Justice League is a collective started that aims to remove human bias from AI algorithms that can result in exclusionary experiences and discriminatory practices. It focuses on 3 key areas 1) Highlight Algorithmic Bias through Media, Art, and Science 2) Provide Space for People to Voice Concerns and Experiences with Coded Bias, 3) Develop Practices for Accountability During the Design, Development, and Deployment of Coded Systems. AI Now Institute at New York University is an interdisciplinary research center dedicated to understanding the social implications of artificial intelligence. Their work focuses on four core domains: Rights & Liberties, Labor & Automation, Bias & Inclusion, Safety & Critical Infrastructure. AI Ethics Lab brings together researchers and practitioners from various disciplines to detect and solve issues related to ethical design in AI. Based in US and Turkey, the Lab offers a comprehensive approach to ethical design of AI-related technology.

Which naturally leads to: whose ethical and social values? What biases do we build in – intentionally or otherwise – that will affect the output? Each individual, socio-cultural group, and national geography can have different attitudes to ethics, morality and legality. This is further complicated by the choice of data used to train AI systems. Even the best-laid intentions can go awry if the data itself breaks our ethical standards.

This article originally appeared in the March 2017 issue of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine. We thank RAM and the authors for giving us permission to reproduce it here. Algorithms with learning abilities collect personal data that are then used without users' consent and even without their knowledge; autonomous weapons are under discussion in the United Nations; robots stimulating emotions are deployed with vulnerable people; research projects are funded to develop humanoid robots; and artificial intelligence-based systems are used to evaluate people. One can consider these examples of AI and autonomous systems (AS) as great achievements or claim that they are endangering human freedom and dignity. We need to make sure that these technologies are aligned to humans in terms of our moral values and ethical principles to fully benefit from the potential of them.

This article originally appeared in the March 2017 issue of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine. We thank RAM and the authors for giving us permission to reproduce it here. Algorithms with learning abilities collect personal data that are then used without users' consent and even without their knowledge; autonomous weapons are under discussion in the United Nations; robots stimulating emotions are deployed with vulnerable people; research projects are funded to develop humanoid robots; and artificial intelligence-based systems are used to evaluate people. One can consider these examples of AI and autonomous systems (AS) as great achievements or claim that they are endangering human freedom and dignity. We need to make sure that these technologies are aligned to humans in terms of our moral values and ethical principles to fully benefit from the potential of them.