Abstract
The term ‘responsible AI’ has been coined to denote AI that is fair and non-biased, transparent and explainable, secure and safe, privacy-proof, accountable, and to the benefit of mankind. Since 2016, a great many organizations have pledged allegiance to such principles. Amongst them are 24 AI companies that did so by posting a commitment of the kind on their website and/or by joining the ‘Partnership on AI’. By means of a comprehensive web search, two questions are addressed by this study: (1) Did the signatory companies actually try to implement these principles in practice, and if so, how? (2) What are their views on the role of other societal actors in steering AI towards the stated principles (the issue of regulation)? It is concluded that some three of the largest amongst them have carried out valuable steps towards implementation, in particular by developing and open sourcing new software tools. To them, charges of mere ‘ethics washing’ do not apply. Moreover, some 10 companies from both the USA and Europe have publicly endorsed the position that apart from self-regulation, AI is in urgent need of governmental regulation. They mostly advocate focussing regulation on high-risk applications of AI, a policy which to them represents the sensible middle course between laissez-faire on the one hand and outright bans on technologies on the other. The future shaping of standards, ethical codes, and laws as a result of these regulatory efforts remains, of course, to be determined.
Highlights
Out of concern for the unprecedented pace of AI development and the ensuing social and moral problems from 2016 onwards, a great many organizations have issued statements of commitment to principles for AI
An aspect that is mostly glossed over in these sources is that requirements like the absence of bias, explainability, and robustness in particular cannot adequately be met by citing measures culled from management handbooks alone—especially as new techniques of ML will have to be invented and associated software tools be coded from scratch
How are we to evaluate these steps? Do they amount to mere ‘ethics washing’? The charge of mere ethics washing is to mean that all the developments reported above are just ‘ethical theatre’ intended to keep regulation at bay
Summary
Out of concern for the unprecedented pace of AI development and the ensuing social and moral problems from 2016 onwards, a great many organizations have issued statements of commitment to principles for AI. I ask myself whether the companies involved did try to implement AI principles in practice in their own companies and, if so, precisely how and to what extent This includes efforts by these companies to act in concert with other companies and realize responsible AI amongst themselves (self-regulation). The outcomes of these AI efforts are used internally for their own products or processes, for selling AI (as software or cloud services) to clients, or for advising about AI—or, for a combination of those activities Such companies, to be referred to as ‘AI companies’, have exclusively been selected for further consideration since only those kinds of firms are able to change the character of AI and transform it into responsible AI in practice. This describes AI as a system composed of perception, reasoning/decisionmaking, and actuation; and as a discipline including machine learning, machine reasoning, and robotics.
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