It's time for AI ethics to grow up; Wired, January 8, 2020

Stephanie Hare, Wired; It's time for AI ethics to grow up

The ethical challenges of AI are well known – but there's been little action. Now lawmakers need to step in

"The ethical challenges of artificial intelligence are well known. In 2020 we will realise that AI ethics will need to be codified in a realistic and enforceable way. Not doing so will present an existential threat to individuals, companies and society...

Many people would argue that this debate should go even wider than AI, calling on us to embed ethics into every stage of our technology. This means asking not just “Can we build it?” but “Should we?”...

We will challenge the idea, long held by many technology enthusiasts, that technology is “neutral”, that we should allow technology companies to make money while refusing to take responsibility beyond the bare minimum of compliance with the law.

Kate Crawford, co-founder of the AI Now Institute, challenged this position in her lecture to the Royal Society in 2018 when she asked: “What is neutral? The way the world is now? Do we think the world looks neutral now?” And Shoshana Zuboff, in her 2019 book Surveillance Capitalism, argued that the power of technology can be understood by the answers to three questions: “Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides?” Even a brief survey of the world of technology today shows clearly that that power must be contained."