【Expert Interpretation】

Author: Gao Wen (Member of the National Science and Technology Ethics Committee and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering)

The "Opinions on Strengthening the Governance of Science and Technology" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions") is a milestone programmatic document in the field of science and technology ethics governance in my country in the new era. It provides a role in promoting the development of "science and technology for good", serving the social progress of our country and benefiting mankind. The basic standards are of far-reaching significance for effectively preventing scientific and technological ethical risks and promoting the modernization of scientific and technological governance systems and governance capabilities.

The research content of artificial intelligence often involves sensitive areas of science and technology ethics. According to the spirit of the "Opinions", I believe that the following work should be mainly carried out:

First, the moral level. In accordance with the spirit of the "Opinions", we must improve the scientific and technological ethical norms and guidelines in the field of artificial intelligence, and provide ethical constraints and guidance on scientific and technological personnel, so that scientific researchers have a good ethical awareness and always use ethical and moral red lines to restrain themselves during the research and development process. . Promote the establishment of ethics committees of artificial intelligence research institutes and enterprises, consciously carry out artificial intelligence ethical risk assessment, monitoring and real-time response, so that moral guidance and moral constraints run through the entire process of artificial intelligence design, research and development and application.

The second is the technical level. We must strengthen the technical control and prediction capabilities of front-line scientific and technological personnel so that they can timely identify the development stage and degree of development of various potential risks (such as: the risks are not serious at present, but there are certain potential risks; the near-term urgency of risks Not strong, but the long-term severity must not be underestimated; the severity of the risk is generally underestimated, and it has not been effectively supervised and controlled, etc.). At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the management, detection and evaluation of algorithms, data and applications, build an effective risk warning mechanism, and reduce ethical risks through continuous improvement of technology.

The third is the legal system. We must place the construction of laws and regulations in an important position, use them as the highest basis for the ethical governance of artificial intelligence, and continuously improve the legal system of ethical governance of artificial intelligence, so that artificial intelligence technology can be fully developed from design, research and development, testing, industrialization to application. There are laws to follow in the process, eliminating the blind spots in legal supervision of artificial intelligence ethical governance.

Artificial intelligence research should be guided by the "Opinions" to accurately grasp the requirements of artificial intelligence governance, and to promote the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, and to ensure that artificial intelligence technology complies with social ethics.

First of all, we must firmly establish the awareness of moral and ethical red lines and draw the bottom line of ethical governance. Technology development often goes ahead with ethics, so moral ethics must always be regarded as a prerequisite for scientific and technological innovation and technology application. Especially before entering unknown fields to explore or pioneering applications, we must comprehensively analyze potential moral and ethical risks, and through thought experiments and Various forms such as ethical paradox deduction evaluate the degree of risk and identify potential risk points that may trigger moral ethics. Scientists should always regard the basic moral ethics of human beings as an insurmountable red line, form strict moral ethical boundaries and bottom lines in scientific research activities, and engage in various scientific research innovation and application practice activities in the field of moral ethics security.

Secondly, we must establish an agile response mechanism to actively respond to problems arising from scientific and technological ethics governance. In the practice of scientific and technological activities, mankind will face many new and unforeseen ethical governance challenges. On the one hand, we must adhere to ethics first; on the other hand, we must establish a complete set of agile response mechanisms to quickly deal with emerging moral and ethical risks and risks, and organize experts such as ethics, humanities and social sciences, law, and science and technology policies in a timely manner. Carry out evaluation and research with scientific and technological developers, and timely issue industry conventions, scientific and technological ethical norms, laws and regulations, etc. to minimize the negative impact of ethical governance lag behind scientific and technological development.

Finally, we must strengthen international exchanges and cooperation and explore the formation of Chinese solutions for scientific and technological ethical governance. In terms of moral and ethical concepts, different countries, different ethnic groups, and different cultures have both similarities and similarities, as well as their own unique perspectives and positionings. We must stand at the strategic height of a community with a shared future for mankind, adhere to the basic principles of scientific and technological ethical governance of "enhancing human welfare, respecting the power of life, adhering to fairness and justice, reasonably controlling risks, and maintaining openness and transparency", and strive to promote scientific and technological ethical governance that is in line with all mankind. plan. At the same time, we must also combine our country's five thousand years of cultural traditions and conduct in-depth research on our country's unique scientific and technological ethical governance path. In particular, we must proceed from the interests of the vast majority of the people and actively prevent a series of moral and ethical issues such as data security and privacy leakage, algorithmic discrimination, security risks based on deep forgery, rule of law risks, and scientific and technological poverty. We must not only focus on solving the ethical governance problems faced by China itself, but also make China's contribution to the development of all mankind.

"Guangming Daily" (16th edition, March 24, 2022)