In an effort to tackle the ethics of Artificial Intelligence, this Thursday, the nations of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted a text defining the common values and principles needed to ensure the healthy development of the technology.
Complex and common
The ethics of Artificial Intelligence are complex, as the technology is increasingly present in daily life, from driverless cars to booking online flights. According to UNESCO, AI also supports the decision-making in governments and the private sector, and is used to address global issues such as climate change.
There was a clear need for review of the ethics of Artificial Intelligence, according to the UN body, “We see increased gender and ethnic bias, significant threats to privacy, dignity and agency, dangers of mass surveillance, and increased use of unreliable AI technologies in law enforcement, to name a few. Until now, there were no universal standards to provide an answer to these issues,” UNESCO explained in a statement.
Human rights and sustainability
As a result, the adopted text aims to highlight the advantages of Artificial Intelligence, while mitigating its inherent risks. The text provides a guide to ensure that digital transformations promote human rights and work toward achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, while addressing issues around transparency, accountability and privacy, with action-oriented policy chapters on data governance, education, culture, labour, healthcare and the economy.
The text focuses on data protection, going above and beyond what tech firms and governments are doing to guarantee individuals more protection by ensuring transparency, agency and control over their personal data. The document also explicitly bans the use of Artificial Intelligence systems for social scoring and mass surveillance.
The text also emphasises that Artificial Intelligence actors should favour data, energy and resource-efficient advances and approaches that will help ensure that Artificial Intelligence becomes a more prominent tool in the fight against climate change and in tackling environmental issues.
