AI: Issues, Concerns and Ethical Considerations

1. What are the issues and Concerns around AI?

Personal Privacy: Human behaviour and activities can be tracked in many ways that were
unimaginable earlier. AI systems need huge amounts of data in order to be trained. In many
cases data involves individual faces, medical records, financial data, location information etc
may result in data privacy concerns. If we are to responsibly introduce AI, we all need to
follow tried and tested best practices for data protection and privacy.
Job Loss: One of the primary concerns around AI is the future loss of jobs. According to
research by McKinsey, 800 million people will lose their job. AI will create more jobs which
may require new skill set and people may be trained to take up new opportunities that may
arise in future.
Mistakes made by AI: AI systems make mistakes due to the intelligence that these machines
have acquired. If Humans make a mistake there are laws that can be enforced but we don’t
have such laws for AI based systems. The errors can have their origins either in the learning
phases of AI or in the performance phases.

Eg: Mistakes done made Microsoft’s AI Chatbot – ‘Tay’ was released on Twitter in 2016. In
less than one day, due to the information it was receiving and learning from other Twitter
users, the robot learned to spew racist slurs and Nazi propaganda. Another example is also
from Microsoft Surface device. The device allows the user to login using your face. However,
the device has difficulty recognising faces of people from certain demographics. Microsoft
identified this issue and fixed it later
Ethical Concerns: The ethics of AI is the part of the ethics technology specific to robots and
other artificially intelligent beings. It can be divided into roboethics, a concern with the moral
behaviour of humans as they design, construct, use and treat artificially intelligent beings,
and machine ethics, which is concerned with the moral behaviour of artificial moral agents
(AMAs). Ethics of AI is very important due unintended consequences that may occur that
can occur when we build that technology.
The bigger concerns are:
(i) Whether AI based systems can take human-like decision that is unbiased ,fair or
trust worthy.
(ii) Whether the data used for training an AI system is wrong.

AI and Bias: AI bias, is a phenomenon that occurs when an algorithm produces results that
are systematically prejudiced towards certain gender, language, race, wealth etc. and
therefore produces skewed or leaned output. The 3 sources of AI bias are data, algorithm
and people. The biased data can produce unexpected result. Algorithms can have built-in
biases because they are created by individuals who have conscious or unconscious
preferences that may go undiscovered until the algorithms are used publicly. People involved
in developing AI system will try to make the most accurate results from the available data .

• Eg:- AI tools associate ‘Doctor’ to a man and ‘Nurse’ to a woman.

• The virtual assistants (Alexa, Siri, Google assistant etc.) all have female voices
• Computer vision systems report high error rates while recognizing people of colour.

AI: Ethics, Bias and Trust: Another concern regarding AI is the possible misuse of the
technology, which lead to a trust and confidence issues. More complicated usage of
algorithms like machine learning or neural networks, makes it less likely for human beings to
understand how AI arrived at a conclusion.
Employment and AI: Jobs that are monotonous and repetitive, can be easily automated; this
can gradually lead to certain jobs becoming obsolete. Activities related to customer care
operation, document classification, content moderation, production line in factories etc., are
at risk of being taken away by smart robots and software. AI will create millions of more jobs
than the ones that it will affect. These new jobs will require higher order thinking skills.

. • Self-driving cars and trucks will take over transportation in few years.

• More traditional professions, such as legal professions and accounting will be significantly
impacted. In these sectors we will start to see different kinds of roles emerging, which
require higher order skills.

• Financial Services, Insurance and any other sector requiring significant amounts of data
processing and content handling will also be impacted to a certain extent. AI can have a
significant role in eliminating bureaucracy, improving the service to citizens

. • The healthcare sector and imaging services will also have some degree of impact.

.
2. Define the term ethics.
Ethics is defined as the discipline dealing with moral obligations and duties of humans. It is a
set of moral principles which govern the behaviour and actions of individuals or groups.
3. Fill in the blanks:
AI is basically data + mathematical model + ____________+ predictions.
(ans: training based on data)
4. What are the sources of AI bias?
Ans:

Data :AI system are as good as the data we put into them. And putting biased/skewed
data into the system is the reason for AI bias. AI system don’t have understanding of
whether their training data is right or wrong and have enough representation from a
broader base. Amazon developed an AI tool for recruitment, but the company realized
its new system was not rating candidates for software developer jobs and other technical
posts in a gender-neutral way. This is because Amazon's computer models were trained
to vet applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-
year period. Most resumes came from men, a reflection of male dominance across the
tech industry .

Another example is that of voice assistants like Siri or Alexa that are trained on huge
databases of recorded speech that are unfortunately dominated by speech samples from
white, uppermiddle class Americans, making it challenging for the technology to
understand commands from people outside this category

Algorithm While algorithm, in itself doesn’t inject bias but can amplify the biases
caused by data. For example, an image classifier trained on the images available in
public domain - which happens to show more women in the kitchen as opposed to men.
AI algorithms are designed to maximize accuracy. So an AI algorithm may decide that all
people in the kitchen are women, despite the fact the training data has some images of
men in the kitchen. It thereby incorporates a gender bias in the AI system.
 People :The last issue is with the people who are developing the AI system i.e.
engineers, scientists, developers etc. They aim to get the most accurate results with the
available data. They are often lesser focused on the broader context. It is rightly said
that ethics and bias are not the problem of the machine but that of the humans behind
the machine.
5. How can we address the challenge of trusting AI ?
The governments, industry and regulatory bodies need to join hands in addressing the
challenge of ‘AI trust’ by doing the following:
1. Minimize bias in training data
2. Share the algorithm with the government/public/users, if possible
One of the most famous algorithms right now in the world is the ‘Google Search’.
Sunder Pichai, the Google CEO, had to describe the algorithm to lawmakers, explaining
that the search algorithm uses over 200 signals, including relevance and popularity, to
determine a page rank. A bipartisan bill was recently proposed by the US lawmakers that
would require internet giants such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo and AOL to disclose their
search algorithms ( https://sensecorp.com/ethical-ai/)

3. AI developers should be representative/inclusive of diverse backgrounds – gender,

religion, skin colour, language and so on 4. There should be an international monitoring body
that designs and monitors and AI ethics and algorithm policy