Feb 7, 2022Big Tech and AI ethicists — a reciprocal duty to engage?A couple of months ago I was invited to join Mark van Rijmenam, aka The Digital Speaker, and Dan Turchin, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of PeopleReign, in their “Between Two Bots” podcast. …Ai Ethics4 min readAi Ethics4 min read
Nov 3, 2021AI ethics — getting up early, but waking up lateOn September 8–9 2021, ForHumanity, a public charity formed to examine and analyse the downside risks associated with the advance of AI, organized their first international conference. …Ai Ethics7 min readAi Ethics7 min read
Mar 17, 2021Robinhood: democratized finance on shaky groundLegend has it that towards the end of the 12th century, the heroic figure Robin Hood set out to steal from the rich and give to the poor. More than 900 years later, two American entrepreneurs borrowed his name to establish a fintech company, Robinhood, that promises to “provide everyone…Robinhood App5 min readRobinhood App5 min read
Jan 25, 2021Privacy conundrums in early 2021 — on violators and accomplicesIt took me a couple of days to realize what that sudden Clubhouse buzz in my Twitter feed was about. I was just recovering from the shock I had when I realized that the messaging service Signal, which has been hyped as a privacy-friendly alternative to Whatsapp, notified anyone who…Privacy4 min readPrivacy4 min read
Dec 4, 2020No, we don’t want to ‘democratize’ AIEveryone concerned with ethics is probably used to cringing while reading news on AI. For me, one of the most reliable triggers for such cringing is the talk about ‘democratizing AI’; and I am not the only one. Take this: Selling video analytics as “surveillance in a box” is said…3 min read3 min read
Nov 21, 2020Four reasons why hyping AI is an ethical problemBias, discrimination, privacy violations, lack of accountability — AI entails a lot of ethical problems. Hyping AI creates additional ethical challenges on top of the existing ones. Here is how: 1. We do not need AI for everything The AI hype epitomizes the belief that we need AI for everything…Ai Ethics4 min readAi Ethics4 min read
Feb 15, 2020Why we should hope that corporate claims about the ethics of facial recognition are pure marketingOn January 15 2020, Meredith Whittaker, Cofounder of the AI Now Institute, gave a testimony, entitled “Facial Recognition Technology (Part III): Ensuring Commercial Transparency & Accuracy”, at the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform. The testimony provides excellent insight into how facial recognition technology can exacerbate inequality…5 min read5 min read
Feb 4, 2020Opposing facial recognition — why focusing on accuracy misses the pointFacial recognition has come under massive scrutiny, not least since its live variant has come to attention. Approaches to using it are quite divided. …4 min read4 min read
Mar 15, 2019Why AI really needs social scientistsA few weeks ago, the San Francisco based think tank Open AI published a paper titled “AI Safety Needs Social Scientists”. The paper describes a new approach to aligning AI with human values, i.e. ensuring that AI systems reliably do what humans want, by treating it as a learning problem…Artificial Intelligence6 min readArtificial Intelligence6 min read
Feb 22, 2019Algorithmische Entscheidungen und soziale Spannungen — Künstliche Intelligenz im politischen KontextBeim Lesen des ausgezeichneten Berichts des Council of Europe zu «Diskriminierung, KI und algorithmischen Entscheiden» (auf englisch) fragte ich mich, inwiefern algorithmische Entscheidungen dazu beitragen können, Diskriminierung in bereits stark gespaltenen Gesellschaften zu verstärken. Zu meiner Überraschung katapultierte der Bericht mich beinahe 20 Jahre zurück in die Zeit, als ich…5 min read5 min read