Home » Economy » How will TÜV test artificial intelligence, Mr. Schlesinger?

Dirk Schlesinger has a doctorate in mathematics, aerospace engineer, worked for Cisco and BCG and is now Chief Digital Officer of TÜV Süd AG. He is also concerned with how the company will be able to certify artificial intelligence in the future in addition to its already established test fields. Behind this is the desire of the EU Commission and many European governments to make this key technology more transparent, to regulate it and, for example, to classify it into different risk categories. But what could such a TÜV seal for AI look like? What is the difference between software and auto?

In September 2016, Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff informed employees, customers, and investors that Salesforce would be an AI-driven company. Earlier that year, Microsoft released its Tay research chatbot project through a Twitter Account. Microsoft shut down Tay after only 16 hours because it started to mimic the deliberately offensive behavior of other Twitter users, and Microsoft had not given the bot an understanding of such inappropriate behavior. With chatbots as one of Salesforce's most promising customer service-related technologies, Kathy Baxter, in her role at that time as Principal User Researcher, was curious about understanding what went wrong with Tay. She also wanted to know how that type of AI-enabled system behavior could be avoided at Salesforce.

The pandemic that has raged across the globe over the past year has shone a cold, hard light on many things--the varied levels of preparedness to respond; collective attitudes toward health, technology, and science; and vast financial and social inequities. As the world continues to navigate the covid-19 health crisis, and some places even begin a gradual return to work, school, travel, and recreation, it's critical to resolve the competing priorities of protecting the public's health equitably while ensuring privacy. The extended crisis has led to rapid change in work and social behavior, as well as an increased reliance on technology. The expanded and rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) demonstrates how adaptive technologies are prone to intersect with humans and social institutions in potentially risky or inequitable ways. "Our relationship with technology as a whole will have shifted dramatically post-pandemic," says Yoav Schlesinger, principal of the ethical AI practice at Salesforce.

When it comes to protecting the growing infrastructure at Polaris Alpha, CISO Eric Schlesinger believes in a people-and-processes approach over a tools-based approach. But five years from now, those priorities will likely shift. "I believe that machine learning and AI are the future to security operations. An'artificial analyst' can replace one or two full-time employees in the long run because it will make decisions based on patterns on the network… and take action for you," Schlesinger says. The company has already invested in several "cutting edge" machine learning security tools in anticipation of these new capabilities, he says.