{"id":114913,"date":"2018-05-14T14:52:34","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T14:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=114913"},"modified":"2018-05-14T14:52:34","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T14:52:34","slug":"ai-and-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/ai-and-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"AI and ethics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Artificial technology has been in the news recently, for all the wrong reasons. Google naively showed off the functionality of its new Duplex AI, while NtechLab has announced a new product to identify ethnicities (unfortunately not a joke).<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\"><strong>Google Duplex<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\nGoogle Duplex is a new AI assistant that can handle tasks over the phone. That\u2019s right, Duplex is able to make phone calls and book appointments on your behalf. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, showed the assistant off at its I\/O developer conference, including a recorded example of Duplex calling to book a haircut:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bd1mEm2Fy08?start=40\" width=\"760\" height=\"427\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In the clip, Duplex is shown to be indistinguishable from a human on the phone. The crowd, unsurprisingly, loved it \u2013 even whooping when the AI sounds most human saying \u2018Mmm-hmm\u2019 to acknowledge a point made by the hairdresser. It\u2019s not surprising, this is Google\u2019s I\/O developer conference \u2013 for these people, super advanced AI is a great achievement.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for Google,\u00a0a number of people and news outlets have now raised concerns over\u00a0not being able to tell the difference between people and computers.<\/p>\n<p>What Google failed to mention is that the AI would identify itself, so the person on the other end of the phone would know it was chatting to a robot \u2013 but even that throws up questions and concerns.<\/p>\n<p>What if the AI doesn\u2019t understand a question it\u2019s asked, or an accent? How many times is a vendor likely to repeat themselves or reword queries if they know they\u2019re talking to a machine? And what does it say about society that people are now getting machines to\u00a0book haircuts on their behalf?<\/p>\n<p>Google suggests it can be used by businesses to automatically take bookings, though how many people want to call up to book a table at a restaurant and be handled by a machine?<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s also concerns over the data Duplex gathers on individuals \u2013 for this to work you have to tell Google an awful lot about what you want booked, when, when you\u2019re free, alternative times for the appointment, the details of what you\u2019re booking and why. Under the GDPR, if this data is processed by Google then you have to be informed &#8211; imagine the conversation with your AI assistant if they have to explain all the ways the data will be used!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 20px;\"><strong>Recognising ethnicity<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-114914\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ntechlab.jpg\" alt=\"ethnicity recognition\" width=\"760\" height=\"430\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ntechlab.jpg 760w, https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ntechlab-300x170.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ntechlab-705x399.jpg 705w, https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ntechlab-450x255.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/ntechlab-500x283.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 760px) 100vw, 760px\" \/><br \/>\nThe other ethical AI story is even more concerning. Russian NtechLab is a group of experts in the field of deep learning and artificial intelligence; the website states they \u2018like to invent algorithms which work in unconstrained real-life scenarios\u2019. The only listed product so far is a facial recognition tool.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the \u2018coming soon\u2019 section that raises concern, with a product called \u2018ethnicity recognition\u2019. There\u2019s no further information, but the image suggests it will identify people\u2019s \u2018ethnicities\u2019 based on their faces. It\u2019s not clear why this would EVER be needed, nor how it could ever be accurate.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/fortune.com\/2018\/05\/11\/google-duplex-virtual-assistant-ethical-issues-ai-machine-learning\/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=fortunemagazine&amp;utm_medium=social\" target=\"_blank\">Forbes points out<\/a>, it\u2019s amazing that these companies are able to create\u00a0such tools, without seeing the ethical issues that are more obvious to those that don&#8217;t work in tech. Socialogist Zeynep Tufekci said: \u2018Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Artificial intelligence is not bad, it makes all of our lives easier every day and, as the CIPR&#8217;s ongoing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cipr.co.uk\/AI\" target=\"_blank\">#AIinPR<\/a> study shows, it&#8217;s of great benefit to the PR and communications industry. When developing AI functionality, companies need to consider their responsibilities towards data subjects and clients. The GDPR comes into force on 25 May and the automation of data, for the benefit of AI, will be under more scrutiny than ever before. It&#8217;s hard to see how an ethnicity recognition tool will pass\u00a0the new stringent regulation requirements.<\/p>\n<p>As for Google, the whole company is built on AI and for the most part, people are not concerned. Where Duplex has fallen down is by being too real. We&#8217;re not in Blade Runner* &#8211; society just isn&#8217;t ready for a world where it&#8217;s impossible to distinguish between computers and people, fiction and reality. At least, not yet.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*Insert your own favourite popular 80s&#8217; sci-fi film here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artificial technology has been in the news recently, for all the wrong reasons. Google naively showed off the functionality of its new Duplex AI, while NtechLab has announced a new product to identify ethnicities (unfortunately not a joke).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":114914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7365,3484,7272],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114913"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114916,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114913\/revisions\/114916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}