The IEEE Standards Association has released a report calling for engineers to consider the impact their work will have on climate change, children, and society. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is one of the largest organizations for computer scientists in the world. With hundreds of thousands of members, the group undertakes initiatives to create common standards and often consults organizations like the European Commission and OECD on matters of ethics and design principles. "It is imperative to move beyond business as usual and to prioritize the well-being of our children, starting with protecting their privacy and security online. If we fail to do this, their agency, mental health, and self-actualization as humans in any culture will be reliant on forces beyond their control," reads the report titled "Measuring What Matters in the Era of Global Warming and the Age of Algorithmic Promises." The whitepaper encapsulates change already underway at the IEEE that's in line with AI ethics principles released in spring 2019 after years of work, according to John Havens, director of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous & Intelligent Systems.

Universities in China and elsewhere in Asia are belatedly joining global alliances to promote ethical practices in artificial intelligence or AI, which were previously being studied in university research centres in a fragmented way. Countries like South Korea, Japan, China and Singapore are making huge investments in AI research and development, including the AI interface with robotics and are in some areas rapidly narrowing the gap with the United States. But crucially there are still no international guidelines and standards in place for ethical research, design and use of AI and automated systems. China's universities in particular are turning out a large number of researchers specialising in AI. Whereas in the past they would head for Silicon Valley in the US, many are now opting to stay in the country to work for home-grown technology giants such as Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu – companies which gather and use huge amounts of consumer data with few legal limits.

The idea that our ability to reflect has been outsourced to algorithms may seem hyperbolic. We assume we have agency regarding the choices we make, influenced by the paradigm of personalization but not subsumed within a Matrix of someone else's making. But how do you know? Have you created a list of activities you'd never delegate? Could you even discern where your moral boundaries end and codified biases begin? While welcoming the feedback that sensors, data and Artificial Intelligence provide, we're at a critical inflection point.