Why Ethics In Artificial Intelligence is Important

Science fiction movies portray a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence taking over the humans. Well, in my opinion that's bit too exaggerated at least considering the near future. For me what is more likely to happen or rather is happening is the unethical use of Artificial Intelligence by humans on other humans for nefarious intention.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Humans always game the system

According to me there are 2 types of system that humans have managed to game. One occurs naturally through evolution and the other is man made.

1. Biological system
2. Artificially intelligent system

Before I start let me give you a quick primer on Artificial Intelligence. Ai is a term given for a computer simulation that is capable to think just like humans. Ai was introduced to the world back in 1956 and gained popularity in the year 2009 with the exponential rise of internet. This is because Ai requires large number of data to be train well and the internet made this possible.

Biological System

If you look at the brief history of evolution, it shows how we started off as a single cell on this planet that evolved to become an organism. The organism realized it had higher energy requirements to survive so it consumed smaller organisms as food. Because energy was the basis of survival for it an incentive was introduced into it , to do it on a continuous basis over and over again. Similarly it realized it had to multiply in order to become a complex organism and hence it produced similar copies of itself. Fast forward today nothing much has changed. Humans basically have this same survival philosophy. We need energy so we consume food and get rewarded with a good feeling and when we reproduce boom!! again a good feeling.

The point I am trying to make here is that today we have gamed this biological system just for the reward part.
Take for example the Junk food vs Healthy food debate we have with our self every time we decide to eat. Large fast food corporations have spend billions of dollars in R&D to perfect their unhealthy food to taste better and give us that good feeling after consumption. You can check out my post on junk food to understand better by clicking here

Artificially Intelligent System

One of the examples that come to my mind when I think of gaming the Artificial intelligence is the 2016 US election. A quick disclaimer: I am not from the US and I don't support any of the political sides.
Tech giants like Google and Facebook were the early movers in the AI space. They had deployed Ai algorithms on their platform to study user behavior and to increase user engagement. What they didn't expect is that someone can use this system to promote political narratives. People on their phone constantly saw political ads and propagandas , the more they saw it the more they got of it which later influenced their vote . One candidate was very successful in capitalizing on this and did end up winning the election.

Ai vs Humans

Another area where ethical use of AI should be exercised is in the Job sector and this is a more serious problem we are facing right now. Large corporation are aggressively implementing Ai and Automation in their industry to maximize profits this leave the employees without jobs. And what's even worse is the fact that these jobless people are in a vicious circle of reskilling as per the market demands and these market demands keeps changing with Ai being introduced in that sector. Even in the software industry the bottom layer of software is being eaten up. Check out my post of how an Ai algorithm called gpt-3 will put software engineers at risk here

Conclusion

Any technology is a double edged sword. It is our duty to construct strict policies that protect us from any kind of exploitation. At the same time we must create better incentives for tech corporations so they don't feel the need to game the system. I would like to end this with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi

There is enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.

If you made it till here, Thank you so much. You can also check out my other posts
Astronomy : The antidote to Arrogance
The expectation of constructing realistic expectations
Biologging a Boon or Bane ?
Ethereum's Scaling Dilemma
MERKLE : The unsung hero of decentralization

TL;DR

1. Humans always game the system for greed.
2. Our biological system is one of the systems humans have gamed . Our eating habits have been gamed by large fast food corporations so that they can profit off us.
3. Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that needs to used in an ethical manner.
4. Policies must be introduced to protect the common people from use of unethical Ai and at the same time not jeopardize innovation.