With AI advancing in capability and availability, many scientists and experts have begun highlighting the risks of deploying this emerging technology. There’s an overriding desire to deploy AI ethically, or to instill models with human-based values, but it remains to be seen how to standardize such an approach or even whether to regulate the industry. That’s where organizations like the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) come in.
Computer says no
When interviewed for the journal Issues in Science and Technology, the so-called ‘Godmother of AI’ Fei-Fei Li tried to explain how scientists and engineers can build AI that truly adheres to our values.
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Her thesis around the responsible use of AI centers not on anthropomorphizing AI or considering it an intelligence capable of navigating the world and arriving at its own independent conclusions. Rather, it will reflect the values that we instill into it, whether that’s through training or continued use of these tools.
She added in this interview that it’s also about recognizing that AI, as any tool, can both empower and harm humans.
Values-driven AI
The organization that the American computer scientist leads, HAI, is an interdisciplinary research center that focuses on how best to guide AI development so that it benefits humanity and doesn’t incur or lead to harm.
In recent years, there’s also been an increased emphasis on whether to regulate AI nationally (or even globally) and what shape that might take. Doing so, however, is far easier said than done, with progress occurring at different paces, in different guises, and inconsistently across oceans.
There are, for example, different values that different nations or groups of people may wish to instill into the AI models they build that clash with the values of others.
