President-elect of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen made clear in her recently unveiled policy agenda, that not only will artificial intelligence (AI) be a key component of European digital strategy, but the cornerstone of the European AI plan will be to develop “AI made in Europe” that is more ethical than AI made anywhere else in the world.
What this means is not always clear, since there is no universal consensus on ethics. However, most European policymakers are less concerned about the “what” and more about the “why.” As explained by former Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip, “Ethical AI is a win-win proposition that can become a competitive advantage for Europe.” This idea that Europe can become the global leader in AI simply by creating the most ethical AI systems, rather than by competing to build the best-performing ones, has become the conventional wisdom in Brussels, repeated ad nauseum by those tasked with charting a course for Europe’s AI future. But it is a delusion built on three fallacies: that there is a market for AI that is ethical-by-design, that other countries are not interested in AI ethics, and that Europeans have a competitive advantage in producing AI systems that are more ethical than those produced elsewhere.
Read the full article on Euronews.
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As in all public policy, there is a trade-off between efficiency and equity. In this concept ethics stand for equity, but it would be very important to see the efficiency part as well and to choose a right balance between these two. It is a little confusing how EU want to gain competitive advantage (efficiency) through ethics (equity). The mainstream philosophy suggests the opposite.
Som svar til As in all public policy, af Jacint Juhasz
But the changes are happening too fast for a lot of people and societies aren't able to demand quick fixes when they are really needed in this world of "fast and agile development". This may result in real problems as we can already see with the raise of populism, demands for splitting or nationalising huge platform companies etc. Possible Europe's way is anyhow the best in spite of the risks? (I haven't read the report yet).
It's interesting that the EC wants to prioritize 'research on explainable algorithms rather than accurate ones'. In my view explainability is one of the most important ethical considerations regarding AI applications; to avoid black-box decision-making and unexpected negative results and outcomes for EU citizens (whose cultural and political context may differ substantially from the US or China).
Accuracy seems to be a much more technical consideration of how data input leads to certain decisions and conclusions, albeit with a distinct ethical and social component (biases, quality of data, cultural and political context of implementation, etc).
Furthermore, hard performance metrics such as accuracy, safety and reliability, which are thought to be real market differentiators, all have distinct ethical components. If Europe wants to differentiate itself on these aspects it cannot do so by over-regulating or outright blocking and stalling development and adoption. Instead, Europe should lead the way in responsibly integrating ethical considerations in design specifications (focused on both hard and soft performance metrics), regardless of whether AI is developed here or adopted from the US and China.
Perhaps the EC should read some of the great reports and guidelines that are produced by its own HLEG on AI to get a better grip on the 'nebulous concept of ethics'. So they may see how ethical considerations and concerns already permeate every technical aspect of designing and implementing AI in responsible ways (respecting rights, duties and other societal and cultural considerations).
I've found those AI HLEG reports very enlightening, practical and inspiring thus far ;)
It does not help much to reduce the debate about ethical principles in AI to a consideration of AI being more competitive without ethical principles, which is trivial in general, not only in the case of AI, if competitiveness is looked at in short-term perspective. Taking into view the return on AI development in the longer run and covering also non financial aspects, the picture changes. That is what AI Made in Europe shall be about, and it is worthwhile and valuable.
Som svar til It does not help much to af Norbert JASTROCH
I fully concur with that! Besides that I also think that in parallel we indeed need to make efforts very soon on creating a global definition of ethics itself, it is nonetheless vital for ongoing AI development to stick to notions of the ethical values we currently are able to define. And about competitiveness, there is a factor of economical competitiveness what we vaguely define by the speed and degree of commercializing the various outputs of AI research.
Although, for the long-term, I would refer to the late Stephen Hawking and say that another factor of competitiveness will become a crucial question whenever we arrive to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) - but that time it will be about competitiveness of the human race in the field of relevancy and existence. And this is the long-term domain where ethics will be the only way to "control" AGI - or better said, to make sure that the goals of AGI and those of the human race are aligned.
Som svar til It does not help much to af Norbert JASTROCH
I'm glad that EU is going strong towards ethical AI. Ethics in a code needs much of a thinking and togetherness with co-operation. It is not easy but very very hard to do and when we're able to do that, we're quite good with the more easy things like efficient AI. It seem to be quite common populist action to throw two needed things against each other and claim that only one of those can be reached. If you stop to think of it, that's not the case at all. AI for EU is needed and welcome project and i hope the very best for it.