If AI research is to be ethical – then Big Tech to be controlled

I have started listening to the Reith Lectures on AI by Professor Stuart Russell, founder of the Centre for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, at the University of California, Berkeley. They continue this week on Wednesday.

Something I am listening to – AI and why people should be scared

Here s an interesting opinion piece, looking at AI and Big Tech by Timnit Gebru, published by The Guardian. Full disclosure before you head over to read the article, Timnit Gebru, was publicly fired by Google.

For all of us to make informed decisions about Artificial Intelligence (AI) we need to access sources that are informed and also outside our comfort zones. The AI generated play lists and feeds that only supply the articles and opinions that make us happy and cause our click through rate to soar, will not enable us to make informed decisions. They are designed to maximise profit for shareholders not for education. Education and so informed opinion needs an receptive open mind and various points of view to base that opinion on.

So here is the other side of the story – Big Tech led innovation anyone can tap into

I read this blog post by Anil Jain, Managing Director, Media & Entertainment Industry Solutions, Google Cloud on the Google blog. It is interesting how Google sees the potential of AI and ML to enhance the user experience, getting information to them when they want it and when it will be most useful. Using this information businesses will be able to address the needs of these users and make them into customers.

This type of research could be done in traditional ways with surveys, questionnaires’ and focus groups, these techniques take time and depend on the answers humans give you. I did my own research into this when I designing my research survey for my Masters degree last year – it is so easy to introduce bias or just get the answers the person thinks you are looking for.

Googles approach with AI/ML processes huge amounts of data and reduces the human introduced error, returning the results in nearly real-time.

Now you expand your reading and personal research and make your mind. Whether you do or whether you don’t AI and ML will be playing a greater part in all our lives in the future.