What Should We Do About The Ethical Governance Of Artificial Intelligence?
What Should We Do About The Ethical Governance Of Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is the core technology in the fourth industrial revolution and has received great attention from the world. my country has also formulated a series of development plans and strategies around artificial intelligence technology, which has vigorously promoted the development of my country
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the core technology in the fourth industrial revolution and has received great attention from the world. my country has also formulated a series of development plans and strategies around artificial intelligence technology, which has vigorously promoted the development of my country's artificial intelligence field. However, while artificial intelligence technology brings major development opportunities to economic development and social progress, it also brings profound challenges to ethical norms and social rule of law.
Ethics is the principle and order norm for dealing with the relationship between people and between people and society. In human history, major scientific and technological developments often bring about significant changes in productivity, production relations and superstructure, becoming an important criterion for dividing the times and also bringing profound reflection on social ethics.
After human society entered the information age in the mid-to-late 20th century, information technology ethics gradually attracted widespread attention and research, including personal information leakage, information gap, information cocoon, and insufficient regulation of new power structures.
At this stage, artificial intelligence has inherited the ethical problems of previous information technology, but also has new characteristics due to the opacity, difficulty in interpretability, adaptability, and wide application of some artificial intelligence algorithms such as deep learning. It may bring a series of ethical risks in many aspects such as basic human rights, social order, and national security.
1. The defects and value setting problems of artificial intelligence systems may pose a threat to citizens' right to life and health;
2. The deviation of artificial intelligence algorithms in target demonstration, algorithm discrimination, and training data may lead to or expand discrimination in society and infringe on citizens' equal rights;
3. Abuse of artificial intelligence may threaten citizens' privacy and personal information rights;
4. Complex artificial intelligence algorithms such as deep learning will lead to algorithm black box problems, making decisions opaque or difficult to explain, thereby affecting citizens' right to know, legitimate procedures and citizens' right to supervise;
5. The abuse and misuse of artificial intelligence technologies such as accurate information push, automated fake news writing and intelligent targeted dissemination, and deep forgery may lead to problems such as information cocoons and the proliferation of false information, as well as may affect people's acquisition of important news and democratic participation in public issues; the accurate push of false news may also increase people's understanding and viewpoints of facts, and may incite public opinion, manipulate commercial markets, and influence politics and national policies;
6. Artificial intelligence algorithms may use algorithm discrimination, or use algorithms to conspire to form horizontal monopoly agreements or shaft spoke agreements to destroy the market competition environment when it is less likely to be noticed and proved;
7. The application of algorithmic decision-making in various fields of society may cause changes in the power structure. Algorithms have a significant impact on people's rights and freedoms due to their technical advantages of processing massive data and their embedding advantages in ubiquitous information systems;
8. The abuse of artificial intelligence in work scenarios may affect workers' rights and interests, and the substitution of artificial intelligence on workers may trigger a crisis of large-scale structural unemployment, bringing risks in terms of labor rights or employment opportunities;
9. As artificial intelligence is increasingly widely used in all aspects of social production and life, security risks such as loopholes and design defects in artificial intelligence systems may cause data leakage such as personal information, stagnation of industrial production lines, and traffic paralysis, threatening financial security, social security and national security;
10. The abuse of artificial intelligence weapons may aggravate inequality around the world and threaten human life and world peace;
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Due to the diverse causes of artificial intelligence ethical risks and the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology and industrial applications, the governance of artificial intelligence ethical risks is complex, and a complete theoretical architecture and governance system have not been formed so far.
Regarding the development of artificial intelligence, we cannot be blindly optimistic nor give up because of the choke. We must deeply realize that it can increase social welfare. Therefore, as human society enters the era of intelligence, it is necessary to guide artificial intelligence to move forward from a macro perspective as soon as possible, conduct ethical reflection on it, identify the ethical risks and their causes, and gradually build a scientific and effective governance system so that it can better play its positive value.
In terms of the overall path selection of artificial intelligence governance, there are mainly two theories: "opposition" and "system theory": "opposition" mainly focuses on the opposition and conflict between artificial intelligence technology and human rights and well-being, and then establishes corresponding censorship and regulatory systems; "system theory" emphasizes the coordinated interaction between artificial intelligence technology and humans, other artificial agents, laws, non-intelligent infrastructure and social norms.
Artificial intelligence ethical governance is an important part of social governance. Under the guidance of the governance theory of "co-construction, co-governance and sharing", my country should take "inclusiveness and prudence" as the regulatory principle and "system theory" as the governance approach, and start in five aspects: education reform, ethical norms, technical support, legal regulations, and international cooperation, and gradually build a multi-subject participation, multi-dimensional and comprehensive governance system.
Educational reform
Education is an important way to intergenerational transmission of human knowledge and cultivate abilities. Attention to the development and reform of education plays an indispensable role in the development and application of artificial intelligence technology. In order to better support the development and governance of artificial intelligence, it should be improved from four aspects:
1. Popularize cutting-edge technical knowledge such as artificial intelligence, improve public awareness, and make the public treat artificial intelligence rationally;
2. Strengthen artificial intelligence ethics education and professional ethics training among scientific and technological workers;
3. Provide workers with a continuous lifelong education system to deal with the unemployment problems that may be caused by artificial intelligence;
4. Study the changes in youth education, break the limitations of knowledge-based education passed down from the industrial era, and respond to the demand for talents in the artificial intelligence era.
Ethical norms
Formulate ethical norms and codes of conduct for artificial intelligence product research and development designers and future users, and restrict and guide them from the source to the downstream. Currently there are 5 key tasks to be carried out:
1. Research detailed ethical guidelines for key areas of artificial intelligence to form operational norms and suggestions;
2. Proper guidance at the publicity and education level to further promote the formation of an ethical consensus on artificial intelligence;
3. Promote scientific research institutions and enterprises’ awareness and practice of the ethical risks of artificial intelligence;
4. Give full play to the role of the national-level ethics committee, promote the promotion of advanced ethical risk assessment and control experience by formulating national-level artificial intelligence ethical standards and promotion plans, regularly assessing ethical risks for new business forms and new applications, and regularly selecting best practices in the artificial intelligence industry;
5. Promote the establishment of ethics committees of artificial intelligence research institutes and enterprises to lead the assessment, monitoring and real-time response of artificial intelligence ethics, so that artificial intelligence ethical considerations can be carried out throughout the entire process of artificial intelligence design, research and development and application.
Technical support
1. Reducing ethical risks through improving technology is an important dimension of ethical governance of artificial intelligence. At present, driven by scientific research, market, law, etc., many scientific research institutions and enterprises have carried out federal learning, privacy computing and other activities to better protect personal privacy; at the same time, for artificial intelligence algorithms that strengthen security, interpretability, and fairness, as well as technical research on data set abnormal detection, training sample evaluation, etc., we have also proposed the model structure of ethical agents in many different fields;
2. Improve the patent system, clarify the patentability of algorithm-related inventions, and further inspire technological innovation to support the design of artificial intelligence systems that meet ethical requirements;
3. The formulation of recommended standards in some key areas should not be ignored. In the formulation of artificial intelligence standards, we should strengthen the implementation and support of artificial intelligence ethical standards, focus on the formulation of standards in privacy protection, security, availability, interpretability, traceability, accountability, evaluation and supervision support technologies, encourage enterprises to propose and publish their own corporate standards, and actively participate in the establishment of relevant international standards, promote the inclusion of relevant patented technologies in my country into international standards, help my country improve its voice in the formulation of international artificial intelligence ethical standards and related standards, and lay a better competitive advantage for Chinese enterprises in international competition.
Legal regulations
At the legal regulation level, it is necessary to gradually develop digital human rights, clarify the allocation of responsibilities, establish a regulatory system, and achieve an organic combination of rule of law and technical governance. At the current stage, we should actively promote the effective implementation of the "Personal Information Protection Law" and the "Data Security Law" to carry out legislative work in the field of autonomous driving; and strengthen research on algorithm supervision systems in key areas, distinguish different scenarios, and explore the necessity and prerequisites for the application of measures such as artificial intelligence ethical risk assessment, algorithm audit, data set defect detection, algorithm certification, etc., and prepare theoretical and institutional suggestions for the next step of legislation.
International cooperation
At present, human society is entering the era of intelligence, and the rules and order in the field of artificial intelligence around the world are in the formation period.
The EU has conducted a lot of research on the values of artificial intelligence, hoping to transform Europe's human rights tradition into its new advantages in the development of artificial intelligence through legislation and other means.
The United States also attaches great importance to artificial intelligence standards. Trump issued the "American Artificial Intelligence Plan" executive order in February 2019, requiring government agencies such as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to formulate standards to guide the development of reliable, stable, reliable, secure, concise and collaborative artificial intelligence systems, and calls for leading the formulation of international artificial intelligence standards.
my country is at the forefront of the world in the field of artificial intelligence technology and needs:
1. Be more proactive in responding to the challenges brought by the ethical issues of artificial intelligence and assume corresponding ethical responsibilities in the development of artificial intelligence;
2. Actively carry out international exchanges, participate in the formulation of relevant international management policies and standards, and master the right to speak in scientific and technological development;
3. Occupy the commanding heights of development among the most representative and breakthrough scientific and technological forces and make positive contributions to the realization of global governance of artificial intelligence.
Zhang Zhaoxiang is a researcher at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his research direction is visual perception and understanding, human-like learning, brain-like intelligence, etc. inspired by biological cognition.
Tan Tieniu is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a foreign academician of the Royal Academy of Engineering, an academician of the Academy of Sciences in developing countries and a correspondent academician of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. Director and researcher of the Center for Intelligent Perception and Computing of the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research directions are biometric recognition, image and video understanding and information content security.