Big tech's AI landgrab [artificial intelligence - ethics

Abstract

'AI for All' and 'the Democratisation of AI' are current buzz phrases in artificial intelligence. But they can mean different things to different groups. Generally, there is a two-way split. Commercially, they refer to the drive to develop and release new hardware and software tools that open development and innovation to groups beyond data scientists and algorithm authors. But for civil society, they reflect concerns that AI is already being dominated and directed by a few very large companies - typically, the usual suspects of Google, facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and their Chinese counterparts like Tencent and Alibaba. Creating good AI-based applications depends as much on having so-called domain specialists who can identify needs and have the expertise to validate the results as it does on having the engineers who can deliver on their specifications. Too many projects are thought to have failed because only one side of that equation has been fulfilled. But at the same time, concerns over the influence some companies already have seem justified or at least worthy of further exploration.