Author: Rumman Chowdhury
Publisher: Accenture Technology
Publication Year: 2019
Summary: In the following video, Dr. Ruman Chowdury explains how “[artificial intelligence (AI)] is information about people meant to understand trends about human behavior.” There are 2 kinds of bias: bias in data and models and bias in the imperfect world. Ethics is not just about improving technology but improving the society behind the technology. Technologists should consider the implications on society by asking the right questions. With so much emphasis on STEM but less on ethics, there is a need to address the root which is to empower others to have an ethical conscience. A great ethics analogy is: breaks help a car go faster, and having the right warnings to indicate if something will derail helps us feel more comfortable taking risks. In the same way, ethical implementation will help companies be more innovative. Some solutions to address ethical issues are corporations need to have an ethical culture and interdisciplinary teams. An ethical culture means it should be a good thing to be ethical or the standard and interdisciplinary teams entail bringing in a community member who is a regional expert to assist with the ethical questions. To alleviate the fairness issue in AI, Accenture has a fairness tool that helps guide discussion and provide solutions on algorithmic bias and fairness. It works as a decision enabler to pinpoint where unfairness exists in the model.