When you open your social media app, AI decides what will be on your feed. AI helps doctors diagnose your medical conditions. AI sorts through resumes and interviews of hundreds of applicants to find the best employee for a company.
However, as AI is becoming more integrated into our daily lives, even a minor misuse of AI can bring drastic consequences. Biased algorithms, deepfake technologies, privacy-hampering surveillance, etc., are some of the biggest challenges of using AI these days.
To overcome these challenges, everyone must follow certain AI ethics and ensure the use of AI brings no harm to users. It is not something for just data scientists or policymakers. General users must also be aware of these ethics.
In this guide, we will cover AI ethics in detail and talk about real-world ethical concerns. You will learn how to recognize ethical issues related to AI and how to ensure ethical AI use. Let’s begin.
What Is AI Ethics
AI technologies are developing rapidly in today’s world and they need to be governed by a set of principles and guidelines. These principles and guidelines are called AI ethics. If AI isn’t used ethically or following these set guidelines, the technology can harm or discriminate against human rights.
To understand how AI use can be ethical, you need to know about the following principles of ethical AI. These can also be called the five pillars of ethical AI.
- Fairness: When an AI generates an output, it should be without any bias or discrimination.
- Transparency: AI must have proper reasoning behind its decisions and be able to explain the reasons if necessary.
- Accountability: As AI is just a tool, its developers and controllers must be held accountable if the performance of the AI deviates from the principles.
- Privacy and Security: AI must protect browsing information and personal data by preventing unauthorized access to systems.
- Safety: No AI technology should cause any harm to the well-being of humans.
Why Is AI Ethics Important for Everyone?
There is a common misconception that the actions of AI may only impact developers or tech companies. In reality, AI ethics impact all users for the following reasons.
Social Media Algorithms
Nowadays, AI curates content based on the preferences of individual users. For this reason, the recommended content on your social media feed may be different from your friend’s. But when the AI isn’t used ethically, it can promote misinformation.
Recruitment Systems
AI tools are trained to sort through thousands of profiles to find the right candidate. But if the training data is biased, AI can favor certain profiles based on their demographics. This can lead to racial bias.
Wrong Diagnosis in Healthcare
If the training data is biased or incorrect, AI may not be able to diagnose the medical condition of a patient correctly. More importantly, it can lead to a wrong diagnosis, which will lead to more complications.
Spreading Misinformation
With the advancement of AI, deepfake technologies have now become more accessible to general users. These technologies can be used to create and spread false news, misinformation, and propaganda.
Threat to Privacy
AI-powered systems are now used for mass surveillance. These systems can violate the citizens’ right to privacy. Moreover, data collected through surveillance can also be misused.
Real-Life Examples of AI Misuse and Their Solutions
Unless the use of ethical AI is ensured, users may face the following situations. Remember, the incidents mentioned below have already happened with AI.
1. Bias and Discrimination in AI
The output generated by an AI mostly depends on its training data. This training data may contain biases, which the AI will inherit and amplify. As a result, the output of an AI may be more biased. Here are a few examples of AI bias.
- Discrimination in Hiring: Amazon, a global giant, used AI for its recruitment. But as most of the resumes used as training data were of men, the AI showed a bias toward male candidates over female candidates. Amazon was forced to scrap the AI later.
- Racial Bias in Criminal Justice: The US uses an AI tool called the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS), which predicts the recidivism of defendants. Due to the bias in training data, this AI showed unwanted bias against Black defendants, resulting in labeling them as ‘high-risk’.
- Facial Recognition Errors: Various studies showed that facial recognition systems misidentify darker skin tones more than fairer skin tones. As a result, people with darker skin tones face more wrongful arrests.
How to Overcome this Challenge?
- Using a diverse training dataset is a must to ensure fairness across different demographics.
- Bias audits must be conducted regularly to detect and correct unfairness.
- Human oversight in AI decision-making can be helpful.
2. Fake Content Generated by AI
As AI tools can generate realistic images and videos, it is easier to misuse AI to create fake content. Here are a few ethical concerns about this.
- Deepfake Political Videos: In recent years, deepfake videos of politicians were spread who are seen making false statements. It misled voters as well as other politicians.
- Manipulated Content on Social Media: AI-powered bots can spread propaganda or biased narratives on social media. These tools are powerful enough to flood the home feed of users with misinformation or manipulated content.
How to Overcome This Challenge?
- Advanced AI detection tools must be deployed to identify deepfake content.
- Social media platforms must have specific guidelines about recognizing misinformation and manipulated content.
- Responsible development of AI must be promoted.
3. Privacy Violation by AI Surveillance
AI systems constantly collect data from users, often without explicit consent. Here are some examples of privacy violations by AI surveillance.
- Social Media Tracking: Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok collect and analyze user data and behavior to deliver targeted ads. They are also blamed for selling user data to third parties.
- Recording Private Conversations: AI assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home record everything in their range. As a result, private conversations can be recorded and stored by these platforms, increasing the risk of eavesdropping.
- Mass Surveillance: Governments in different countries are now installing CCTV cameras and facial recognition systems on roads or public places. According to many, it can violate the rights to privacy of the citizens.
How to Solve This Challenge?
- Data protection laws must be strengthened to ensure privacy
- AI systems must obtain explicit consent from users before collecting data.
- Each platform should have transparent data policies on how they use the user information.
4. Lack of Accountability
Decisions of AI are made through complex algorithms that aren’t easily understandable to general users. As a result, accountability issues occur with AI.
- Autonomous Car Accidents: In 2018, an autonomous test car of Uber hit and killed a pedestrian. Though the driver of the car later pleaded guilty in court, was she fully responsible for this accident? Or, was it the fault of engineers or the AI itself? This question marks the lack of accountability in such systems.
- Trading Failure: AI-powered trading systems have caused financial losses several times just because they couldn’t conduct correct transactions.
How to Overcome This Challenge?
- AI systems must be transparent and able to explain their decision-making process.
- Legal frameworks must be established for AI failures.
5. Military Applications of AI
Modern-day warfare is highly dependent on AI technologies, where unmanned aerial vehicles are used for both surveillance and attacks. Here are the ethical concerns of AI in the military.
- Autonomous Drones: AI-powered drones can now attack enemy installations without human intervention. It increases the risk of civilian casualties.
- Target Surveillance and Ethnic Killing: AI systems can be used for surveillance on target groups, mostly ethnic or political. They can also conduct ethnic killing.
How to Overcome This Challenge?
- Strict guidelines must be created for military applications of AI.
- Human oversight is a must for the military use of AI.
How Ethical AI Will Impact You?
If the ethical guidelines of AI use are strict, you can enjoy the following benefits.
Personal Use
- Users will get more accurate recommendations based on their preferences. Also, AI will verify if content is manipulated or spreading harmful misinformation. So, no misinformation or deepfake content can spread on social media.
- No tools or companies will be able to steal your personal data and misuse that data. Users will enjoy increased safety if ethical AI is ensured.
- You will get balanced product recommendations based on your preference but won’t face any price discrimination based on your profile or demographics.
- AI-powered assistants won’t collect data or record conversations without consent. The security of your house will also be improved with the enhanced security of these tools.
Healthcare
- If the bias is reduced, AI-powered diagnostic tools will provide a higher accuracy in medical diagnosis. As a result, your chance of getting a better treatment will increase.
- Besides treatment recommendations, AI systems will be able to predict future complications accurately.
- All your medical records and personal information will be stored privately.
Workplaces
- With ethical AI, hiring algorithms won’t discriminate against candidates based on their gender, age, or race. So, the recruitment process will be fair.
- Workplace diversity will improve if AI systems avoid racial biases.
- The productivity of employees will be tracked without invading their privacy. Besides, AI systems will ensure performance monitoring isn’t biased.
Finance and Banking
- Credit scoring will be more accurate and realistic if the AI system isn’t biased.
- Fraud detection won’t cause any inconvenience to innocent customers.
- Financial transactions will be much more secure.
Education and Learning
- Evaluating students will be fair because ethical AI won’t favor any special group.
- Learning apps will be more personalized to provide a better learning experience.
Government and Public Services
- Law enforcement agencies can detect risks faster and more accurately using ethical AI.
- Citizen’s rights will be protected as ethical AI will prevent racial discrimination.
- Explainable AI systems will increase transparency in official procedures.
What Are the Challenges in Implementing Ethical AI?
Talking about Ethical AI is much easier than implementing it in real life. Here are the challenges that make implementing ethical AI difficult.
- There are no standardized regulations or guidelines for ethical AI across countries, industries, and organizations. As different countries have different policies, they don’t apply to specific tools the same way across the border.
- Each industry needs a different type of training for the AI to provide accurate outputs. For example, a healthcare AI is different in training than a financial AI. For this reason, creating universal guidelines for ethical AI is difficult.
- AI research is still outside the scope of government policies or local laws in most countries. As a result, AI developers don’t have any accountability for the ethical use of AI. It leads to the rapid development of unethical AI tools.
- As AI models are trained on historical data, removing bias is a headache. Any historical data contains the existing inequalities. Without the input of these inequalities, the training data will be incomplete. But, if you incorporate the biased data, the output will be even more biased.
- AI systems are far too complex for general users to understand. Sometimes, developers struggle to understand the complex algorithms of AI systems. Creating a system that can explain the decision-making system of AI is really challenging.
- The more data is fed into AI systems, the more accurate will be their outputs. But to feed so much data, AI systems need to invade the privacy of users. This paradox often leads to the unethical use of AI.
Conclusion
We are living in a time when cutting AI off our lives isn’t possible anymore. What we can do is ensure the ethical use of AI so that AI systems are properly monitored and accountable. This practice will help us enjoy the benefits of AI systems without risking our privacy and security.
Implementation of ethical AI may be challenging but it can be done if governments and global organizations take the necessary measures. Strict guidelines should be in place to govern the use of AI in various industries.
