"We are talking about technology ethics now, which is very different from what we talk about technology ethics more than 20 years ago. At that time, incidents such as cloning sheep were all in foreign countries. Today's technology ethics problems are things that happen around us, such as the highly concerned issues of data protection, data privacy, etc. The public has deeply felt the negative impact of technology ethics."

At the theme forum on the Artificial Intelligence Industry Governance at the First Global Digital Economy Conference held recently, Duan Weiwen, director of the Center for Academic Technology and Social Research of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Towards the Ethical Governance of Artificial Intelligence with Social Trust and Multi-party Co-construction". He emphasized that technological innovation should be based on social trust, achieve the unity of scientific and technological innovation and ethical innovation, and move towards co-constructive scientific and technological ethical governance.

In his speech, Duan Weiwen pointed out that ethics is actually a non-compulsory regulation about the good and bad behavior, right and wrong. Regarding the governance of scientific and technological ethics, what is discussed is not compliance or not, but whether it is right or wrong.

What are the scientific and technological ethical principles that should be followed in scientific and technological activities? He introduced that as pointed out in the "Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Governance of Science and Technology Ethics (Draft for Comments)" recently issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology, it includes consensus value standards and codes of conduct such as improving human welfare, respecting the right to life, adhering to fairness and justice, reasonably controlling risks, and maintaining openness and transparency.

Digital ethics issues are essentially a crisis of social trust

Duan Weiwen introduced that in recent years, my country's digital governance related to artificial intelligence has been very frequent and the intensity is getting stronger and stronger. However, because the development of China's digital industry basically pursues a stance of encouraging innovation and inclusiveness and prudence, relevant departments will inevitably face paradoxes such as strict legislation and general violations in the process of digital governance.

In recent years, from the anti-addiction mechanism to prevent the improper request of personal data by application software, to the governance of financial technology and cross-border data security risks, relevant departments have carried out a series of special governance on ethical, legal and social risks related to artificial intelligence. The intensity of relevant measures has become increasingly strong, and has initially shown a trend of diversified governance. He took facial recognition as an example and pointed out that before and after the epidemic, many places have set up facial recognition gates or access controls. Although it is under the special situation of epidemic prevention, it is still questioned by the legal community, such as Guo Bing’s lawsuit against the face recognition case of Hangzhou Wildlife Park. Some media think tanks conducted research on legal and ethical issues such as personal information protection, privacy and security, and organized expert discussions. Before and after the Two Sessions, many CPPCC members called for the abuse of facial recognition technology to be governed. The China Information and Communications Commission also joined hands with relevant companies to promote trusted AI and initiated a "face protection" plan. Recently, the Supreme People's Court also issued regulations on the application of legal issues in civil cases of facial recognition.

In the current environment of digital governance, many technology companies are increasingly concerned about "how society and the government view technology companies and how they view technology." Duan Weiwen believes that social public opinion has always existed. Whether it is privacy leakage, digital addiction, big data killing of old customers, improper access to personal information, algorithmic discrimination, etc., it is ultimately the social trust crisis and reconstruction in the digital age.

"In the digital age, technology has brought us a lot of convenience, but technology is very fragile, because when digital technology appears as a new thing, it has a low threshold for use, no 'trust deficit', and is trusted and loved by young people. When young people are hurt by insufficient awareness of its risks, it will seriously undermine the trust of young people or the entire society in technology." Duan Weiwen said.

Enterprises should reshape the social impression of technology

Duan Weiwen said that for technology companies, whether it is paying attention to social trust, fulfilling the commitment to science and technology to be good, or carrying out science and technology ethical governance, they are closely related to the current trend of digital governance. Given that the impact of the development of digital technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence on the entire society is like a huge hourglass that accelerates flow, the sensitivity of the public to the governance subject to risk perception has gradually increased, which makes the digital governance at this stage have a certain systematic risk prevention nature, thus presenting two new characteristics. "First, subjectively prevent problems before they happen. Once you perceive the possibility of systemic risks, try to eliminate them in the bud; second, objectively retroactively, if the abuse of a technology causes risks, when this risk is unacceptable to the overall governance structure of the society, past mistakes must be held accountable."

Duan Weiwen believes that it can be seen from the policy statements of a series of digital governance measures recently launched by relevant departments that the reason is precisely due to social value and ethical considerations, that is, "not only does it look at compliance or not, but also ask whether it is done right." "In fact, the entire society has a licensing standard for scientific and technological activities, or any scientific and technological activities require a "social license" that must be accepted or licensed by the society; although most of the "social licenses" of science and technology are not tangible, they exist objectively. How is the society's acceptance or license of science and technology? Industry cannot only focus on positive evaluations, but should realize that the introduction of attention and rapid dissemination is often negative evaluations such as negative evaluation, objection or boycott. Enterprises should regard it as the focus of fulfilling social responsibilities, and give full attention and timely responses."

He explained that among the large number of public events that have occurred in the past 20 years, such as the construction of chemical plants, waste incineration plants, and nuclear power plants, and ended by the public's boycott, which is the extreme manifestation of the social permission of science and technology. In digital governance, a comprehensive understanding of the evaluation of society and the public is not only the basis for reflection and adjustment of technology enterprises and industries, but also the basis for improving governance. Therefore, enterprises must face the challenges of social licensing and face the governance pattern that prevents problems and retroactively. They cannot be satisfied with compliance only. They should also recognize the long-term risks of doing wrong things without complying for society, and seriously consider how to do the right things to reshape the social impression of technology.

Duan Weiwen pointed out that there are many measures that enterprises can do, on the one hand, it is technological improvement, and on the other hand, it is ethical design, especially to advocate a kind of care ethics, that is, to care about relevant groups and individuals of scientific and technological activities from the perspective of users and ordinary people.

The process of technological innovation is also a process of ethical innovation

In Duan Weiwen's view, most technology companies and technology experts emphasize that technology is value-neutral, but to truly achieve value-neutrality and move towards science and technology to goodness on this basis, we must actually make great efforts in both technological innovation and ethical innovation. Innovation in the true sense should be innovation for users and social value, and an overall innovation, not just innovation that increases wealth. At the same time, he pointed out that we must transcend technological solutionism and apply technical means to social care. For example, the aging-friendly design of mobile phones combines technical solutions and humanistic considerations, which is very meaningful for improving the humanity of technology. Focusing on caring for people in technology products and services will undoubtedly help enhance society's trust in technology.

Similarly, the long-term development of the industry is also based on social trust, and technological innovation and social innovation must be combined. Duan Weiwen proposed that many ethical principles have been proposed in the fields of technology such as artificial intelligence, but they are not just abstract principles, but should be working assumptions that are constantly improving in the implementation of ethics. Based on science and technology, we must "do the right thing". The process of scientific and technological innovation from 0 to 1 is also the evolution process of scientific and technological ethics from 0 to 1. The latter 0 is the proposal of ethical principles, and 1 is the implementation of these principles and the spirit of scientific and technological ethics contained. In other words, scientific and technological innovation must have a dual leap from 0 to 1, and scientific and technological innovation and value ethical innovation must develop simultaneously.

Duan Weiwen finally emphasized that the process of dual innovation in science and technology and ethics requires the participation of relevant interest groups, the intervention of government, industry, academic, research and media, especially the early participation of the government. The sooner the government joins the systematic social supervision, the clearer the pain points of all parties will be able to know the society's pain points, which will help related work breathe and share the same fate as society, and then find the focus of ethical governance, legal regulations and social work based on specific social ethical and legal issues, and better organically combine them, and carry out systematic governance and agile and stable supervision through "use of both soft and hard" and "multi-pronged approach".

【Reporter】Gao Xiaoping

【Intern reporter】 Chai Yajuan

【Produced】Southern Industrial Think Tank

【Author】 Gao Xiaoping

Southern Industrial Think Tank