https://venturebeat.com/ai/ai-ethics-is-all-about-power/
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This article is part of a VB special issue. Read the full series here: Power in AI.
At the Common Good in the Digital Age tech conference recently held in Vatican City, Pope Francis urged Facebook executives, venture capitalists, and government regulators to be wary of the impact of AI and other technologies. “If mankind’s so-called technological progress were to become an enemy of the common good, this would lead to an unfortunate regression to a form of barbarism dictated by the law of the strongest,” he said.
In a related but contextually different conversation, this summer Joy Buolamwini testified before Congress with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that multiple audits found facial recognition technology generally works best on white men and worst on women of color.
What these two events have in common is their relationship to power dynamics in the AI ethics debate.
Arguments about AI ethics can wage without mention of the word “power,” but it’s often there just under the surface. In fact, it’s rarely the direct focus, but it needs to be. Power in AI is like gravity, an invisible force that influences every consideration of ethics in artificial intelligence.
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Power provides the means to influence which use cases are relevant; which problems are priorities; and who the tools, products, and services are made to serve.
It underlies debates about how corporations and countries create policy governing use of the technology.
It’s there in AI conversations about democratization, fairness, and responsible AI. It’s there when Google CEO Sundar Pichai moves AI researchers into his office and top machine learning practitioners are treated like modern day philosopher kings.
It’s there when people like Elon Musk expound on the horrors that future AI technologies may wreak on humanity in decades to come, even though facial recognition technology is already being used today to track and detain China’s Uighur Muslim population on a massive scale.
And it’s there when a consumer feels data protection is hopeless or an engineer knows something is ethically questionable but sees no avenue for recourse.
Broadly speaking, startups may regard ethics as a nice addition but not a must-have. Engineers working to be first to market and meet product release deadlines can scoff at the notion that precious time be put aside to consider ethics. CEOs and politicians may pay ethics lip service but end up only sending sympathetic signals or engaging in ethics washing.
But AI ethics isn’t just a feel-good add-on — a want but not a need. AI has been called one of the great human rights challenges of the 21st century. And it’s not just about doing the right thing or making the best AI systems possible, it’s about who wields power and how AI affects the balance of power in everything it touches.
These power dynamics are set to define business, society, government, the lives of individuals around the world, the future of privacy, and even our right to a future. As virtually every AI product manager likes to say, things are just getting started, but failure to address uneven power dynamics in the age of AI can have perilous consequences.