The third plenary meeting of the Second Session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was held at 3 pm on the 10th, and the members made speeches at the conference.

Vice President of China Chamber of Commerce and Chairman and CEO of Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.:

The title of my speech is: Accelerate the promotion of research on artificial intelligence ethics.

As an important driving force for the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, artificial intelligence has been elevated to a national strategy. In 2018, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized during the collective study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee that we must give full play to the "leader" effect of artificial intelligence, and also “strengthening research on legal, ethical and social issues related to artificial intelligence.” This has pointed out the direction for the healthy development of artificial intelligence in my country, so that technology can better serve economic and social development and the people's better life.

Artificial intelligence will have a huge impact on human society in the next few decades and bring irreversible changes, which has become a consensus among the international community. Just as ethics and morality are an important stabilizer for the development of human civilization for thousands of years, artificial intelligence ethics will be the cornerstone of the development of future intelligent society. At present, artificial intelligence is still in its early stages of development, but it has shown great power of change. Machines are not only close to voice recognition, face recognition and other fields, but even surpass human abilities in some aspects. In the future, they can replace human-driving cars, diagnosing diseases, teaching knowledge, and testing products. That is to say, machines will no longer be simple tools, but will have the potential to help or even partially replace people in making decisions. Only by establishing complete artificial intelligence ethical norms and handling the new relationship between machines and humans can we gain more benefits for artificial intelligence and let technology benefit mankind.

In history, almost every major technological change will bring new challenges to economic and social development. Artificial intelligence has caused some concerns in society: whether artificial intelligence is safe and controllable, whether humans will be replaced by machines, how to define the responsibilities between humans and machines, etc. For example, with the widespread application of artificial intelligence in the fields of food, clothing, housing and transportation, personal identity information and behavioral data may be integrated, which allows machines to understand us better and provide better services to everyone, but if used improperly, it may cause privacy and data leakage; how to better solve these ethical issues related to society's concerns requires us to consider and lay out in advance.

In 2017, the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" issued by the State Council proposed that by 2020, artificial intelligence ethical norms in some fields should be initially established. Some domestic companies are also actively discussing and putting forward the principles of artificial intelligence ethics, such as the highest principle of artificial intelligence is safety and controllability, the innovative vision is to promote humans to obtain technology and capabilities more equally, and the value of existence is to teach people to learn and make people grow, rather than transcending or replacing people. The ultimate ideal is to bring more freedom and possibilities to mankind. China's artificial intelligence technology research and development and application are in an international leading position, but the discussion on artificial intelligence ethics has just begun, and there is relatively few international cooperation involved, and no broad consensus has been formed.

It is recommended that the government authorities take the lead and organize industry experts, representatives of artificial intelligence enterprises, industry users and the public in interdisciplinary fields, etc. to carry out research and top-level design of artificial intelligence ethics, promote the improvement of people's livelihood and welfare, promote the healthy development of the industry, and grasp the initiative of the new round of technological revolution.

First, clarify the ethical principles of artificial intelligence. Coordinate the forces of all parties, strengthen relevant research, take the people's better life as the ultimate goal, take the innovative development of the industry, clarify the ethical principles of artificial intelligence in terms of security, privacy, fairness, etc., formulate guiding documents on artificial intelligence ethics, and evaluate and guide related issues involving artificial intelligence ethics.

The second is to strengthen the responsibility of leading enterprises and accelerate the implementation of the ethical principles of artificial intelligence. In hot fields such as information recommendation, autonomous driving, and virtual reality, we will promote enterprise leadership and demonstration, implement the ethical principles of artificial intelligence in product design and business operations, and let the information and services provided by artificial intelligence help people grow and gain more development opportunities. At the same time, enterprises are encouraged to explore and solve new problems in artificial intelligence ethics arising from practice, share industry experience, realize the coordinated development of artificial intelligence technology and ethics, and better serve society.

The third is to strengthen international exchanges, lead the development of the industry, and build global consensus. We must actively participate in the research and formulation of global artificial intelligence ethical principles, identify forbidden zones as early as possible, absorb and promote the essence of China's excellent traditional culture such as "people-oriented", so that technological innovation can better benefit mankind, and contribute Chinese wisdom to international artificial intelligence ethics research.

The future has come. Let us seize the strategic development opportunity period of artificial intelligence, accelerate the pace of ethical research and innovation, build a competitive advantage in the development of artificial intelligence in my country, build an intelligent society as soon as possible, and use technology to benefit the people.