State of AI Ethics: A Critical Discussion on the Societal Impacts of AI

NOTE: The feedback from this session will be integrated into the research project that we have going on at MAIEI this summer where we are joined by interns from across the world working on this subject! For more information, check out: https://montrealethics.ai/meet-the-16-inaugural-maiei-summer-research-interns/

☛ please register here

Centre for Ethics – University of Toronto is hosting the Montreal AI Ethics Institute and the local AI ethics community at their offices to discuss the very important subject of State of AI Ethics – there has been a surge in the interest on the societal impacts of AI, especially with a whole host of declarations and sets of guidelines that have been published trying to capture these impacts from different angles. Yet, there are quite a few aspects that are missing in this conversation, especially when it comes to how these efforts are funded, what is the underlying diversity in the teams that put together these reports/research and most importantly are we missing key, unrepresented voices that need to be a part of the conversation but those that don’t necessarily have access to media sources to emphasize their work and opinions.

In this session we’ll be looking to gain a holistic understanding by leveraging insights from a diversity of backgrounds and fields, both from a social science and technical perspective. We’ll be building on the work from the Research Internship Program project at MAIEI (material for that will be sent out closer to the session, please make sure to keep an eye out for the email around August 13/14).

Guiding questions for the session:

1) What are the unheard voices in the current discourse of AI ethics and how do we bring them into the fold of AI ethics enabling them to make meaningful technical and policy contributions? There are a set of AI ethics “elite” and influencers that are driving the conversation, agenda and research directions via their audiences on social media and prior connections from their work which are marginalizing the voices of the people who are on the ground facing the effects of automation.

2) Given the current deluge of declarations, guidelines, and other initiatives that are trying to map out the developments in the field of AI ethics, who are the most underserved audiences when it comes to implementing AI ethics in a practical manner? The ultimate goal of work being done in AI ethics needs to be beyond just academic and theoretical interest and instead help people implement these practices in their research and work so that we can mitigate harms emerging from irresponsible uses of AI systems.

Mandatory Readings:

0-a) Machine Learning 101 [Very strongly recommended for those without a technical background]

0-b) AI Ethics 101 [Very strongly recommended for those that are getting started with understanding issues in this space] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Tme0WU5D8

The following readings are a small sample to get us started – if you find other interesting material on this please reach out to abhishek@montrealethics.ai to have the readings be included for the session.

1) AI and Human Rights by Harvard – https://ai-hr.cyber.harvard.edu/

2) Linking AI principles – www.linking-ai-principles.org

3) Deeper dive Comparative legal study on privacy and personal data protection for robots equipped with artificial intelligence: looking at functional and technological aspects

4) Deeper dive IEEE Ethically Aligned Design – https://ethicsinaction.ieee.org/

NOTE : Please join Slack via http://bit.ly/ai-ethics-signup as we will be actively discussing things there leading up to the session.

Also, please make sure to sign up for the Montreal AI Ethics Newsletter https://bit.ly/maieisubscribe because we’ll be sharing back the results from the session there.

Format :
5:45-5:55 Registration and networking
5:55-6:00 Introduction
6:00-6:05 Break out into groups
6:05-7:35 Group discussion
7:35-7:45 Synthesize group discussion
7:45-8:10 Group presentations and debate [3 min. presentation + 3 min cross-questioning by group]
8:10-8:15 Session wrap-up