Abstract: AI is transforming the existing technology landscape at a rapid phase enabling data-informed decision making and autonomous decision making. Unlike any other technology, because of the decision-making ability of AI, ethics and governance became a key concern. There are many emerging AI risks for humanity, such as autonomous weapons, automation-spurred job loss, socio-economic inequality, bias caused by data and algorithms, privacy violations and deepfakes. Social diversity, equity and inclusion are considered key success factors of AI to mitigate risks, create values and drive social justice. Sustainability became a broad and complex topic entangled with AI. Many organizations (government, corporate, not-for-profits, charities and NGOs) have diversified strategies driving AI for business optimization and social-and-environmental justice.

It is notable, responsive, and appropriate that the majority of the Initiative projects had various interdisciplinary aspects to them--either in their teams or in the people they convened. Grantees felt that such interdisciplinarity was important to continue and in the long term the community will be healthier and more resilient for this. While the "diversity disaster" in the broader AI field is well known.7 Within the sub-field of AI ethics and governance, grantees noted that a field that relied on the same voices, geographies and, often, institutions would result in missing perspectives. With 15% of grantees being non-US based8 and 80% of funding support academic institutions, on this front, and in line with their international ambitions9 the Initiative could have done more. There remains an imperative to push for substantive diversity of thought and experience, both within geographies and across them.

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers play an important role in the ethics and governance of AI, including through their work, advocacy, and choice of employment. Nevertheless, this influential group's attitudes are not well understood, undermining our ability to discern consensuses or disagreements between AI/ML researchers. To examine these researchers' views, we conducted a survey of those who published in two top AI/ML conferences (N = 524). We compare these results with those from a 2016 survey of AI/ML researchers (Grace et al., 2018) and a 2018 survey of the US public (Zhang & Dafoe, 2020). We find that AI/ML researchers place high levels of trust in international organizations and scientific organizations to shape the development and use of AI in the public interest; moderate trust in most Western tech companies; and low trust in national militaries, Chinese tech companies, and Facebook. While the respondents were overwhelmingly opposed to AI/ML researchers working on lethal autonomous weapons, they are less opposed to researchers working on other military applications of AI, particularly logistics algorithms. A strong majority of respondents think that AI safety research should be prioritized and that ML institutions should conduct pre-publication review to assess potential harms. Being closer to the technology itself, AI/ML researchers are well placed to highlight new risks and develop technical solutions, so this novel attempt to measure their attitudes has broad relevance. The findings should help to improve how researchers, private sector executives, and policymakers think about regulations, governance frameworks, guiding principles, and national and international governance strategies for AI. This article appears in the special track on AI & Society.

The belief that AI dominance is imperative for economic development, military control, and strategic competitiveness has accelerated AI development initiatives across countries. The release of national strategic plans has been accompanied by billions of dollars in investment as well as concrete policies to attract relevant talent and technology. In our previous post "How different countries view artificial intelligence", we presented a snapshot of governments' planning for AI, based on our analysis of 34 national strategic AI plans. Our post covered the description of AI plans and categorized countries based on their coverage of various related concepts. In this post, we extend details about what accounts for the variation in countries' AI plans.

An investigative journalist receives a video from an anonymous whistleblower. It shows a candidate for president admitting to illegal activity. But is this video real? If so, it would be huge news – the scoop of a lifetime – and could completely turn around the upcoming elections. But the journalist runs the video through a specialized tool, which tells her that the video isn't what it seems.

In 2016, AI became part of China's national technology development program to boost AI research and development and enter formally the race to become a leading AI nation. That China has made tremendous progress highlights a report published by Tsinghua University. According to the report, "China leads the world in AI papers, has become the largest owner of AI patents, has the world's second largest AI talent pool, and the highest venture investment in AI." China is running a neck-and-neck race with the United States, followed by countries like Japan and South Korea. Since 2018, however, a debate has also been underway in China about ethical and regulatory questions concerning the use of AI.

In 2017, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres noted the difficult challenge that policymakers, particularly those in the Global South face with respect to AI. He said that "The implications for development are enormous. Developing countries can gain from the benefits of AI, but they also face the highest risk of being left behind." For example, in Nigeria doctors are using AI to help reduce the incidence of birth asphyxia, a leading cause of under-five death in Africa, and yet at the same time there are real concerns about AI's impact on rising unemployment and the influence that Google, China, and others are exerting across the Global South. AI technologies are raising complex social, political, technological, economic, and ethical questions.

Growing up, one of my favorite movies was Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. I was fascinated by the idea that a crime could be prevented before it occurred. More interesting to me at the time was the futuristic role that'super intelligent' technology – something depicted as more sophisticated and advanced than humans – could play in doing this accurately. Recently, the role that pre-crime and artificial intelligence can play in our world has been explored in episodes of the popular Netflix TV show Black Mirror, focusing on the debate between free will and determinism. Working in counter-terrorism, I know that the use of artificial intelligence in the security space is fast becoming a reality.

Growing up, one of my favorite movies was Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. I was fascinated by the idea that a crime could be prevented before it occurred. More interesting to me at the time was the futuristic role that'super intelligent' technology – something depicted as more sophisticated and advanced than humans – could play in doing this accurately. Recently, the role that pre-crime and artificial intelligence can play in our world has been explored in episodes of the popular Netflix TV show Black Mirror, focusing on the debate between free will and determinism. Working in counter-terrorism, I know that the use of artificial intelligence in the security space is fast becoming a reality. After all, decisions and choices previously made by humans are being increasingly delegated to algorithms, which can advise, and decide, how data is interpreted and what actions should result.

Five Thirty Eight: Technology Is Biased Too. Growing up, one of my favorite movies was Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. I was fascinated by the idea that a crime could be prevented before it occurred. More interesting to me at the time was the futuristic role that'super intelligent' technology – something depicted as more sophisticated and advanced than humans – could play in doing this accurately. Recently, the role that pre-crime and artificial intelligence can play in our world has been explored in episodes of the popular Netflix TV show Black Mirror, focusing on the debate between free will and determinism. Working in counter-terrorism, I know that the use of artificial intelligence in the security space is fast becoming a reality.