Author: Tristesse Erasmus
Publisher: Stellenbosch University
Publication Year: 2021
Summary: The following article discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) is many times known as a dual-sided sword, sometimes being beneficial, and other times being catastrophic. As the use of AI increases, as well as the amount of biological data being collected increases, there is a major concern regarding the use of AI. This article discusses how “using the currently available AI systems to perform computational tasks on this data, the process of planning and perpetuating a bioterror attack is sped up exponentially.” The article further goes into detail explaining what the 4 major areas of ethical concern are: 1). Data Mining, 2). Biological Data, 3). Bioinformatics, and 4). AI. Not only does the article highlight concerns about AI allowing for bioterrorism attacks to essentially be ‘easier’ to conduct, but it also touches on other ethical considerations of the combination of biological data and the use of AI such as privacy preserving data mining, informed consent for use of data, control of data sharing, and the most important regarding this topic, the issue of predicting trends using biological data. Even if personal information is not used such as gender or race, other characteristics of biological data can easily allow for data scientists to predict trends of what may happen in the future. By doing analysis and predicating these trends, the data professionals need to think of how these results could be harmful to the public. If the wrong people get their hands on predications of future biological threats, this could be very dangerous. The main point to take away from this article is that there are many ethical considerations that need to be taken into consideration when using Data Mining, Biological Data, Bioinformatics, and AI, with the main one being that professionals need to consider the future impacts their results can have, with the example in this article being the increased ‘ease’ in performing a bioterror attack.