The world has made a giant leap in its development in the last 50 years. Nowadays, we are researching and developing yet unknown technologies which have the power to change our lives tremendously. Google being one of the AI pioneers has been recently subject to the whole bunch of criticism regarding the establishment of the ethics council for this field. Why it happened in Google and why ethics matter in the field of artificial intelligence research you will find out in this article.
To begin with, it is mainly large international corporations which are pioneering in these researching activities owing to substantial financial power and sufficient amount of resources required therefor. Given that such researches usually lead to the discovery of something previously unknown, it is important to always have ethical issues on the top of the agenda. This is something many companies have been missing to accomplish while Google rather did not manage to accomplish successfully.
Reasons For The Tech Giant To Withdraw Ethics Council
Just recently, the company announced and implemented the establishment of the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council. This had to be a committee providing the corporation with guidance on how to ethically develop new technologies. However, in just a few days people both from inside and outside of the company criticized the composition of the board due to the fact that one of its members had previously been discriminatory in his sayings.
So, below we have gathered everything you have to know about this initiative of Google and the main reasons for its temporary failure:
- AI research for the benefits of society: one of the first things to know about the formation of the council is its overarching aim of creating benefit for people. Thus, members of the board have to ensure that all the possible applications of the mentioned technology have beneficial effects on the whole society rather than a company itself;
- multifunctional composition: surprisingly enough but in this committee experts in mathematics, computer science, engineering, philosophy, public policy, psychology, and even foreign policy will make decisions together. This allows for a more diverse perspective on the arising issues and thus proves to be a more efficient instrument in their elimination;
- abandoning of the board in one week after its establishment: Kay Coles James, being included into the board, enticed a wave of disagreement due to the fact that she is the president of the Heritage Foundation which preaches anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-immigrant views.
Due to discriminatory views of one of the council members, it had to stop its operations. Nowadays, Google is trying to find a new way to realize this amazing initiative without being so inaccurate in its doings which involve other people’s sayings.
