Gao Yilan, Zhang Rui, Li Xuelong, Artificial Intelligence Ethical Computing, Chinese Science: Information Science, 2023, doi: 10.0000/SSI-2023-0076.

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Breakthroughs in technologies such as multimodal cognitive computing and generative big models have driven artificial intelligence into our lives, accelerating the application of intelligent systems in various fields such as medical care and education. Intelligent systems are increasingly involved in human life and decision-making, from intelligent chess players to intelligent surgical robots. In the production and life of more and more intelligent robots, have you ever been worried that intelligent robots will rebel against humans? How reliable is your intelligent robot? Although under the current technical conditions, intelligent robots have not yet reached the level of creating free will and achieving strong artificial intelligence as imagined, putting aside these futuristic concepts, the application scenarios of artificial intelligence have gradually involved security fields such as human health and privacy. How can we make artificial intelligence adhere to ethical order and serve mankind better? The in-depth socialization of technology has triggered a series of discussions on technical ethical issues.

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While artificial intelligence brings technological changes and improvement in production efficiency, it has also aroused more practical ethical concerns, and its impact on society should not be underestimated. How to build a reliable intelligent system and how to deal with ethical problems brought by technology are a must-answer question for the future development of technology. With the continuous development and socialization of artificial intelligence technology, key ethical governance issues are presented in front of us. It is crucial to make various ethical demands practical. In recent years, both the academic and industrial circles have begun to pay attention to and discuss the issue of AI ethical governance, and have also made preliminary progress in the research of ethical norms. However, due to the abstractness of AI ethics, how to quantify the ethics of intelligent systems is still an unknown problem. Professor Li Xuelong's team from Northwestern Polytechnical University published an article "Artificial Intelligence Ethical Computing" in "Chinese Science: Information Science". The full text explores the possible measurement methods of ethical possibilities on page 34, trying to establish a quantitative computing framework for AI ethics, pointing out that ethical computing will be a key cross-sectional area to promote technical ethical practice and an important basic tool for building ethical norms, aiming to trigger more thinking about artificial intelligence ethics. Artificial intelligence ethical computing is an intersection of disciplines such as artificial intelligence and ethics. Ethical principles are mathematically symbolized or algorithmized through quantitative description, measurement or simulation techniques, and on this basis constrain the ethical performance of intelligent algorithms. Can ethical computing become the key to breaking through the dilemma of ethical governance of artificial intelligence?

The discussion of ethical issues has been long-standing. Asimov's science fiction novels once proposed the famous three laws of robots to limit the behavior of artificial intelligence. However, with the deepening of technological socialization, our ethical concerns are obviously no longer in the fictional scenes of science fiction or movies. Are surgical robots trustworthy? Is the decision-making of the auxiliary decision-making system fair? Did the results of the generative model infringe copyright? These technical ethical issues are closely related to you and me at the moment, and more specific and operational artificial intelligence technology ethical governance solutions are urgently needed.

Comparison of decision-making elements of AI application scenarios

As an important issue in the development of artificial intelligence, the ethical governance of artificial intelligence has attracted widespread attention from all walks of life. In December 2021, UNESCO issued the "Proposal on the Ethical Issues of Artificial Intelligence" to regulate the development of artificial intelligence technology. At the same time, various countries are also actively participating in the discussion on artificial intelligence governance. Research shows that countries around the world have formed a preliminary consensus on technological transparency, fairness and justice, non-harm, and privacy.

The main principles of artificial intelligence ethics

On October 8, 2023, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other ten departments jointly issued the "Technology Ethics Review Measures (Trial)", focusing on the technical ethics review issues arising from the practical application of related technologies in the intelligent field. This is a key step in my country's practice of science and technology ethics governance and provides directional guidance for the healthy development of the field of artificial intelligence.

However, we need to be clear-headed that while the ethical governance of artificial intelligence is progressing, it still faces many problems. How to ensure that intelligent systems make decisions in a good and fair way? How to measure the ethical performance of a system or how to evaluate its decision-making results? How to establish unified and clear ethical norms? The deep-seated reason for all kinds of problems lies in the abstractness of ethics itself. Focusing on qualitative analysis of ethics and lack of quantitative calculations makes it difficult to put relevant norms into practice, which has also become the Achilles heel of the ethical governance of artificial intelligence.

As intelligence penetrates into various fields of human society, ethical governance has become a must-answer question for the healthy and sustainable development of artificial intelligence. Theoretical and technical research of ethical computing can promote the solution of the problem of quantitative analysis of abstract ethics. This may become a lock that restricts artificial intelligence from following human ethics, and is also a key to open up the implementation of AI applications.

Artificial intelligence is the general trend, and relevant legislation and norms will gradually emerge. Who will formulate these rules? Are they scientific researchers who are familiar with the field, or are they not well-known to specific technologies? This question is difficult to answer, but at least, the numerical measurement of artificial intelligence ethics can provide a reference index system for rule designation.

The core of ethical computing lies in the concretization of abstract ethics through quantitative calculations, emphasizing the integration of ethical principles into the practice of computing technology, such as fairness, transparency, privacy protection and credibility. This not only helps the controllable development of artificial intelligence, encourages researchers to understand technical ethics more deeply and consider ethical issues more proactively when building algorithm systems, but will also provide crucial technical reference indicators for formulating principles, laws and regulations of ethical governance, etc.

However, ethical calculations also face many challenges. In open local security scenarios such as autonomous search and rescue and unmanned inspection, intelligent systems need the ability to dynamically perceive and adapt to environmental changes to reduce potential ethical risks. At the same time, ethical decision-making usually involves factors such as emotions and cognition, and requires the use of technologies such as multimodal cognitive computing and causal reasoning to cope with the complexity of ethical reasoning, and more understanding of human ethical decision-making methods. These challenges require in-depth interdisciplinary collaboration to ensure that ethical computing technology can effectively deal with evolving ethical issues.

In short, artificial intelligence ethical computing will be an important tool to promote the development of ethical governance. By promoting the iterative development of ethical governance theory and practice, ethical computing will more safely release the potential of artificial intelligence and is expected to play a role in assisting in the formulation of laws and regulations, ensuring that artificial intelligence develops in a way that conforms to ethical and moral principles, and ultimately benefit human society.

Profile of the corresponding author

Li Xuelong Deputy Director of the Academic Committee of Northwest Polytechnical University and Professor of the Institute of Optoelectronics and Intelligence (iOPEN), whose main research directions are local security, image processing, and imaging.

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Reference reading:

Li Xuelong, Multi-modal cognitive computing (Multi-modal), Chinese Science: Information Science, 53 (1), 1-32, 2023, doi: 10.1360/SSI-2022-0226.

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Li Xuelong, Local Security ( ), Communications of the Chinese Computer Society, 18 (11), 44-52, 2022.

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