As artificial intelligence is increasingly permeating all aspects of our daily lives, while human society is accelerating its intelligence and digitalization, scientific and technological ethics issues are also emerging one after another. From defeating the world champion of human Go, to privacy and security issues that bring about facial recognition, to the frequent accountability of Tesla's autonomous driving accidents, and the virtual Renminbi has caused workplace anxiety, many scholars have expressed concerns about ethical governance issues.

Recently, the "Opinions on Strengthening the Governance of Science and Technology Ethics" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions") issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council pointed out that the focus is on strengthening research on scientific and technological ethics legislation in the fields of life sciences, medicine, artificial intelligence, etc. This is the first national-level science and technology ethics governance guiding document issued by my country, setting a "traffic light" for the ethics governance of emerging technologies.

The true value of artificial intelligence is not to replace people

"Congratulations to 'Cui Xiaopan' for winning the 2021 Vanke Headquarters Best Newcomer Award! As Vanke's first digital employee, 'Cui Xiaopan' officially 'joined' on February 1 this year... The write-off rate of prepaid overdue documents she urged to apply for reached 91.44%. "At the beginning of this year, a WeChat message released by Yu Liang, chairman of the board of directors of Vanke Group, flooded the Moments. It is reported that this virtual person named "Cui Xiaopan" has been working for many days, and many Vanke employees don't even know that the colleagues he communicates with every day are not real people. It was not until the "Best Newcomer Award" was announced that the truth was revealed.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, virtual people are rapidly moving towards commercialization. As virtual people with unique skills enter the workplace, the "workers" are increasingly worried about whether their "rice bowl" will be stolen. You should know that these virtual people can not only achieve "996", but also "007", and even have to pay their wages all year round.

However, just like the two sides of the coin, the emergence of artificial intelligence has also filled some vacancies in high-risk positions, such as jobs with toxic and harmful working environments or high-risk work, or jobs that need to be away from the city for a long time. Artificial intelligence has played a good supplement to human resources. On the one hand, it has helped many enterprises solve the problem of "difficulty in employment"; on the other hand, under the increasingly serious aging trend, it has effectively alleviated the labor shortage.

As CEO and CTO of Space Exploration Technology Company () and CEO of Tesla, Musk's attitude towards artificial intelligence is complex. On the one hand, he warned that the "derailment" development of artificial intelligence is one of the three major threats facing mankind at present, and we must avoid thorough development of artificial intelligence; on the other hand, we are actively developing human-friendly artificial intelligence, seeking the symbiosis between humans and artificial intelligence through brain-computer interface technology, and almost all of his companies are related to artificial intelligence.

"The dispute over the ethics of artificial intelligence discusses the relationship between humans and machines, and more importantly, the relationship between people using artificial intelligence as a medium." Duan Weiwen, director of the Center for Science, Technology and Social Research of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the China Electronics Newspaper reporter: "At present, the ethical governance of artificial intelligence mainly involves four major difficulties: one is controllability and security; the second is reliability, accuracy and stability; the third is interpretability and transparency; and the fourth is accountability and accountability." In his opinion, every step of the development of machine intelligence is learning human intelligence, which cannot be separated from the help of human intelligence. In fact, human intelligence is smarter and smarter, not machine intelligence.

"The true value of artificial intelligence is not to replace people, but to put people first and benefit people. The relationship between artificial intelligence technology and ethics is not a relationship of one rise and another, or the relationship between you and you are strong and I am weak, but complement each other." Zhang Hui, director of Megvii Artificial Intelligence Governance Research Institute, said in an interview with a reporter from China Electronics News, "In fact, for any technology, it cannot develop in disorderly manner without the constraints such as laws and regulations, social ethics, and industry norms. In this regard, artificial intelligence is no exception. Under the framework of legality, compliance and reasonableness, artificial intelligence will only develop better and healthier."

Global ethical governance trends are the same

At present, at least more than 60 countries around the world have formulated and implemented artificial intelligence governance policies, which shows that the rules and order in the field of artificial intelligence around the world are in the formation period, and the development of ethical governance is becoming more and more frequent. Duan Weiwen pointed out: "Foreign ethical governance of robots should be the most mature, such as the UK, Singapore, and the EU, and others, all have relevant ethical design specifications." For example, the UK has issued the first design standard on robot ethics in history - "Guidelines for Ethical Design and Application of Robots and Machine Systems". The Financial Stability Commission of the United Kingdom (FBS) has formulated the application norms of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the financial services field, emphasizing reliability accountability, transparency, fairness and ethical standards.

The United States hopes to ensure and enhance its dominant position in the field of artificial intelligence, so it emphasizes the scientificity and flexibility of regulation, and pays more attention to scientific and technological ethical governance in practical applications, such as strict management of the use of large-scale biometric recognition technologies. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires companies to delete some face databases, even including related algorithms.

The EU's regulatory style tends to be tough, and has successively issued guiding documents such as "EU Artificial Intelligence", "Credited AI Ethics Guide", and "Algorithm Responsibility and Transparent Governance Framework", hoping to reshape the global digital development model through high standards of legislation and regulation.

Foreign technology companies such as Microsoft and Google are also actively exploring the ethical governance of artificial intelligence. For example, Microsoft has three major institutions, including the Office of Responsible Artificial Intelligence (of AI), the Committee on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Engineering Research (AI and and), and the Responsible AI Strategic Management Team (AI), which are responsible for AI rule formulation, case studies, implementation supervision, etc., and have developed a series of technical solutions.

Google stipulates the principles of design and use of artificial intelligence from both positive and negative aspects, and promises to adjust these principles in a timely manner over time. It also established a central team for responsible innovation to promote the implementation of ethical governance practices, such as suspending the development of credit-related artificial intelligence products to avoid aggravating algorithmic injustice or bias; refusing to pass facial recognition review proposals based on technical issues and policy considerations; research involving large language models continues with caution and cannot be officially launched until a comprehensive review of AI principles.

In terms of research on artificial intelligence ethics, foreign countries are more active. Stephen Schwartzman, co-founder, global chairman and CEO of Blackstone Group, a global private equity giant in the United States, donated $188 million to Oxford University to fund research on artificial intelligence ethics. Musk also donated $10 million to the Institute of Life to teach robots "ethics and ethics."

Zhang Hui pointed out: "Discussion and cooperation between governments, enterprises, relevant social organizations and industry organizations of various countries are gradually strengthening, and the United Nations is also playing an increasingly important role in the formulation of international artificial intelligence governance rules. It can be said that artificial intelligence governance has become a global consensus and has entered the stage of establishing rules and regulations from the conceptual level."

"There is another thing worth paying attention to. The dynamic governance of artificial intelligence technology will in turn promote the development of artificial intelligence technology itself." Duan Weiwen said. For example, the situation where facial recognition technology is banned in some scenarios is only temporary, and increasing governance efforts will promote the relevant technical shortcomings to be filled more quickly.

Artificial Intelligence Ethical Governance is Still a New Proposition

Artificial intelligence has had a profound impact on the entire human society. Zhang Hui said: "The greater the ability of technology, the more it needs to be properly managed. Artificial intelligence is not only an important means for us to create a better life, but also an object that needs to be properly governed."

my country's artificial intelligence technology field is at the forefront of the world and is also at the forefront of explorers in the practice of artificial intelligence ethical governance. Some good practices are also being discussed and referenced overseas. For example, at the policy level, the issuance of "Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Comprehensive Governance of Internet Information Service Algorithms", "Ethical Norms for the New Generation of Artificial Intelligence", and "Opinions on Strengthening the Governance of Science and Technology" provides top-level design guidance for science and technology ethics governance, and some areas with faster development have also shown subdivided norm requirements.

At the same time, some domestic technology companies such as Megvii, JD.com, iFlytek and other technology companies have successively established AI Ethics Committees, AI Governance Research Institutes and other special organizations, and have vigorously promoted the implementation of AI governance work from within the enterprise and from itself. Tencent Research Institute and Tencent AI Lab jointly released the artificial intelligence ethics report "Technical Ethics View in the Intelligent Era - Reshaping the Trust of the Digital Society", advocating the establishment of a new technological ethics view for artificial intelligence. Alibaba Security explores "using AI to govern AI" and promotes the sustainable development of artificial intelligence. Megvii first released the "Artificial Intelligence Application Guidelines" and launched the "Top Ten Artificial Intelligence Governance Events in the World" selection for three consecutive years.

However, as of now, the ethical governance of artificial intelligence is still a new proposition, and there is not much historical experience to refer to. The entire industry is also "governing while developing", gradually improving laws and regulations and building consensus on moral ethics.

"Artificial intelligence enterprises face a 'technical trap'." Duan Weiwen pointed out, "Artificial intelligence technology will also bring social value and ethical impacts while empowering society, and in the short term, the negative impact may be amplified. If some companies do not pay attention to ethical issues in their early development, it will lead to social distrust. For example, changing the name Meta and transforming into the meta-universe has attracted a lot of doubts, especially criticisms about privacy and security. At this time, an "ethical callback" is needed to make artificial intelligence 'credible' through a series of behaviors of the enterprise."

He believes that ethical issues brought about by the development of science and technology should be responded to actively. For example, for data ethics issues, we must strengthen data privacy protection and information security protection; for example, for algorithm ethics issues, we must urge the platform to eliminate prejudice and discrimination and maintain fairness as much as possible; for information dissemination ethics issues, content platforms need to think about how to ensure the health of content and reduce false information when distributing content using artificial intelligence technology. "It is not enough to formulate ethical norms alone. Artificial intelligence companies should use these measures to grasp a 'degree' and seek (social license) so that they can find the greatest common divisor between technology and ethics."

Finding the "greatest common divisor" must be a multi-party collaboration process. Zhang Hui said: "The application chain of artificial intelligence is very long, including technology providers, system integrators, application software developers, individual developers and other enterprises and practitioners, as well as users and beneficiaries of AI products and applications from different industries. At present, the national laws and regulations are gradually improving the rights and responsibilities of different stakeholders. With the development of the industry, I believe that the ethical governance path of artificial intelligence will become clearer in the future. Enterprises must strictly abide by laws and regulations in every process and link in promoting AI technology innovation and application. This is the red line and bottom line of all work."