Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives. It helps in various areas from online shopping to medical diagnostics. But as AI advances, questions about ethics and safety arise. Let’s figure out why this is important and how to avoid possible problems.
Why is AI ethics important?
Ethics helps determine what is right and what is wrong. This is especially important when AI makes decisions that can affect people’s lives. For example, if AI is to make lending decisions, it must do so fairly.
In 2016, Microsoft released a chatbot called Tay that was supposed to communicate with people on Twitter. However, users began sending him racist and offensive messages, and the bot soon began repeating the same words. This showed that AI can easily learn bad things if left unchecked.
Creating Ethical Standards
To ensure that AI is useful and safe, rules and standards are created. They help developers avoid uncontrollable developments.
The European Union is actively developing laws to regulate the use of AI. In 2021, the AI Act was proposed, which would set strict rules for high-risk AI systems such as medical diagnostic tools and autonomous cars. These regulations require that such systems be thoroughly tested and certified before they are used.
The dangers of uncontrolled use of AI
Without proper control, AI can become dangerous. For example, he can make decisions that could hurt or kill people.
In 2018, an Uber autonomous vehicle hit a pedestrian in the United States. The investigation showed that the car did not recognize the person on the road. This happened due to shortcomings in programming and testing the AI system.
Biased Algorithms
Sometimes AI can make decisions unfairly due to bias in the data it was trained on. Unfortunately, not all AI users have a decent ethical level. There is a category of people who deliberately “feed” AI immoral “nonsense.”
In 2019, it was revealed that Amazon’s recruiting program was biased against women. The AI was trained on resumes that the company received over the past 10 years, and it turned out that the majority of these resumes belonged to men. As a result, the AI began to screen out women’s resumes, deeming them less suitable.
Lack of transparency
Transparency means we need to understand how AI makes decisions. If this is not clear, mistrust of such systems may arise.
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic first began, many hospitals used AI to allocate resources such as ventilators. In some cases, patients and their families did not understand why one person was given a device and another was not. This raised many questions and dissatisfaction.
Ethics and safety of AI are important aspects of its development. For AI to be useful and safe, ethical standards must be created and enforced, its use must be monitored, and transparency must be ensured. This will help make the world a better and safer place for everyone.
In any case, AI is still far from its uncontrolled use, and not even because it is a “stupid student,” but because it learns primarily from humans.
To be continued…
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