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AI, Impact Investment, Ethics & Deeply Human-Centered Innovation: End-notes

End-notes & Categorized References

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[1] In over-sweeping terms, I am supportive of those who do promote developments in the realms of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Data Sciences, Computational Thinking, Computer Sciences and automation.

[2] R&D

R&D stands for “Research and Development”. It is a key concept to the driving motivation of this text as well as being a driver in innovations across the world. In general, it is used within engineering- and technology-driven businesses, such as in businesses that work on Artificial Intelligence or other technological innovations.

Moreover, the Life Sciences, the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the investment world too, uses the abbreviation. There seems to be a trend of “R&D” being used in the Humanities and the Arts. Examples can be retrieved online such as from UNESCO, JSRD or the BBC: http://uis.unesco.org/en/glossary-term/humanities-and-arts-rd-data or https://www.jsrd-humanities.com/ or https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd .

While spending in the Humanities and R&D are already defined (cf. The Chronicle List, 2018), I propose a support of a trend that the abbreviation, the implied methodologies, workflows and processes, be used more frequently (and perhaps at times more accurately) in fields of the Humanities, the Social Sciences and the Arts. Such usage could lead to further identifiable investment and spending potentials. According to The Chronicle List, “Median R&D spending on the humanities among the 388 academic research institutions that reported such spending that year was $224,000.” The list claims the highest R&D spending in Humanities at one university to be $23,526,000 in the 2016 fiscal year.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education. (April 1, 2018). The Chronicle List. Colleges with the Greatest R&D Spending in the Humanities, FY 2016. Retrieved July 27th, 2019 from https://www.chronicle.com/article/Colleges-With-the-Greatest-R-D/242984

R&D implies the use of methodological workflows and approaches.  It is found in teams, at times as (corporate) department names, where its members work towards obtaining new knowledge or new processes that, in turn, create the basis for innovations in applications and system developments. A company can outsource R&D to a university. In Europe, it might also be known as Research and Technological Development (RTD). This text aims to introduce a methodology that also supports research and development and this in the realm of ethical development.

Examples on the usage of the abbreviation, and its further substantiations, can be found online while academic references and other papers on the term and its implied methodologies are readily available as well. Some further references:

Bijker, Wiebe & Leonards, Chris & Wackers, Ger. (2001). Research and Technology for Development (RTD) through a EU-APC Policy Dialogue: scientific background, methodology, and toolbox. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition – AMER J CLIN NUTR.

Borrás, Susana & Edquist, Charles. (2019). Knowledge Production and R&D. 10.1093/oso/9780198809807.003.0004.

Neo, Molotja & Ralphs, Gerard. (2018). A critical review of social sciences and humanities R&D expenditure in South Africa, 2005–2014. South African Journal of Science. 114. 10.17159/sajs.2018/20170407.

Lomas, EJ; (2017) Defining and valuing the R&D delivered by the arts, culture, humanities and social sciences for the creative economy. Presented at: London Conference in Critical Thought, London. Retrieved on July 23, 2019 from http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1561670/

Ramanayake R.A, Kasun. (2019). Research And Development (R&D) For Technological Policy. International Journal of Internet Science. 3. 5.

Zhu, Hailun & Zhao, Shuliang & Abbas, Asad. (2019). Relationship between R&D grants, R&D investment, and innovation performance: The moderating effect of absorptive capacity. Journal of Public Affairs. e1973. 10.1002/pa.1973.

[3] …as is the obvious nature of what can be called “innovative” in either form, function, consideration, integration or remapping.

[4] Such publications are found in the realms of (popular) media, community & civic representatives, from tech & technique providers, from business, academia or policy makers.

[5] This entire writing here was catalyzed by a reading of the World Economic Forum’s January 2019 White Paper entitled: AI Governance. A Holistic Approach to Implement Ethics into AI. which spurred a browsing by this author across publications from a number of trans-national institutions (UN, OECD, EU, IEEE, etc.), academic papers, and books on the matter of ethics in association with machines, robots and AI in specific.

[6] Social Bias

Social Bias to a number of researchers and authors, seems to act as a serious catalyst to consider ethical consequences associated with the workings of such technological design (i.e. Artificial Intelligence and the algorithms involved). Research by, for instance, IBM researcher Francesca Rossi on the matter can be followed here: https://www.research.ibm.com/5-in-5/ai-and-bias/ (Retrieved July 23, 2019). A number of papers and publications can be found on the topic. For instance:

Angwin, J., et al. (2016). Machine Bias. There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks. In Pro Publica Retrieved on July 23rd, 2019 from https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing

Courtland,R. (June, 2018). Bias Detectives: The Researchers Striving to Make Algorithms Fair, in Nature 558, no. 7710 (June 2018): 357–60. Retrieved on July 23, 2019 from https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05469-3

Knight, W. (Apr 11, 2017). The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI. No one really knows how the most advanced algorithms do what they do. That could be a problem, in Mysterious Machines. Artificial intelligence is a black box that thinks in ways we don’t understand. That’s thrilling and scary. MIT Technology Review, May/June 2017. Retrieved on July 23rd, 2019 from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/?set=604193

Spielkamp, M. (June 12, 2017). “We need to shine more light on algorithms so they can help reduce bias, not perpetuate It.” MIT Technology Review. Retrieved on July 23, 2019 from t https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607955/inspecting-algorithms-for-bias/

Wang, Y., Kosinski, M. (2017, September 7). Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/hv28a

West, S.M., Whittaker, M. and Crawford, K. (2019). Discriminating Systems: Gender, Race and Power in AI. AI Now Institute. Retrieved from https://ainowinstitute.org/discriminatingsystems.html.

[7] World Economic Forum. (2019). AI Governance. A Holistic Approach to Implement Ethics into AI. Retrieved on June 3, 2019 from https://www.weforum.org/whitepapers/ai-governance-a-holistic-approach-to-implement-ethics-into-ai

[8] OECD. (2019). Algorithms and Collusion: Competition Policy in the Digital Age. http://www.oecd.org/daf/competition/Algorithms-and-colllusion-competition-policy-in-the-digital-age.pdf

[9] OECD. (2019). Artificial Intelligence in Society. Retrieved on June 3, 2019 from http://www.oecd.org/going-digital/artificial-intelligence-in-society-eedfee77-en.htm

[10] IEEE. (2019). Ethically Aligned Design. A Vision for Prioritizing Human Well-being with Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. Retrieved June 4, 2019 from https://standards.ieee.org/news/2019/ieee-ead1e.html

[11] European Parliament. (2016). Ethical Aspects of Cyber-Physical Systems. Scientific Foresight study. Retrieved June 5, 2019 from http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/563501/EPRS_STU%282016%29563501_EN.pdf

[12] The WEF White Paper

The WEF White Paper suggested a, to me, intriguing yet doubt-arousing approach to implement all forms of moral sets within a larger technological ethics-controlling-system that could be selected (switched in-between or on/off) depending on the cultural, social or moral setting within which the AI would be applied, while also being enabled to be entirely turned off.

Mapping this interesting idea with the findings of ethicists concerned with machines, it would seem (quasi) impossible (for the moment) to implement ethical frameworks such as Classical Utilitarianism (Mill) or the Categorical Imperative (Kantian ethics). While the innovative idea of the White Paper seems, at first, attractive to me (mainly due to my ignorance and thus its novelty value), it also seems to feel, to me, that it might miss the point. It feels as creating a proverbial culturally relativist melting pot of ethics. While sure, on the surface it seems very considerate and thoughtful to be inclusive of all (i.e. switch in-between) and non (i.e. turn off). In general, I tend to agree and I am excited by diversity and pluralities. It is deeply enriching to me as a one human among others with each of our own subjective constraints, conditions, experiences, similarities and differences.

Yet, I could not help that the White Paper consequentially felt that such ideas for ethics in AI was not necessarily driven by a respect for individual differences or for cultural variances but, perhaps wrongly interpreted by me, was due to a possible dismissal of continuing a trial (Research & Development) to find transcending innovative and paradigm-shifting innovations. The latter could be touching on ethical consciousness rather than accepting ethics as a static and dogmatic extrinsic monolith.

Moreover, the innovative suggestion felt as it almost intentionally segregated from the thoughts and acts of human individuals themselves, in their creating, implementing or interacting with others, with their environments and with its technologies, such as AI. If the text is human-centric then it should aim or consider solutions within the human individuals and this in addition to the innovating delegations to the technological implementations (of ethics). It surely offered some hint towards the latter,

I feel The WEF’s White Paper did not at all hint at research or implementations towards the former. I would be interested in learning more about this motivation as well as about R&D done in both (i.e. human & tech). Is it a dismissal, a fear, a blindness? I do not know (yet).

For further details I wish to direct you to the references and studies mentioned by Beavers, A.F. Moral Machines and the Threat of Ethical Nihilism. (2012); in Lin, P. (et al) (ed.). Robot Ethics The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

[13]

Ethics & Software Engineering

Interestingly enough, when one looks at the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice as published by ACM in 2011, one could identify the document assigning a considerable responsibility to the engineer and their managers. I note that, as far as I could tell, this consideration too seems absent in the World Economic Forum’s White Paper.

I wonder, in my ignorance, could this white paper be reducing the human agency both in terms of those designing as well as those on the receiving end?

Moreover, one could be reminded of what could be observed in recent events associated with “Public Good” and the release of designs in the public of more or less intelligent automated systems and their surrounding (lack of / reduced degrees of) ethics. Some such events were associated with e.g. data privacy issues; cyber-attacks and computers (and consequentially business and their people) taken as hostages; users used as raw data material rather than end-users/clients; data mining without consent; or automated systems firing employees due to an error somewhere down or up the chain of automated actions.

One could wonder whether there is a systemic dismissal of this ACM publication during the deployment of certain designs into the public and in respect to the “Public Good” as referred to in this ACM publication.

Secondly, one might also wonder this particularly when the Code itself mentions, “…Situations require the software engineer to use ethical judgment to act in a manner which is most consistent with the spirit of the Code of Ethics…”.

Thirdly, one could also wonder whether a Code of Ethics is lacking a methodological program to instill ethical awareness in a designer or other. So, what is going on? Is it the (non-)existence of a less developed Ethical Consciousness? If so, this could be a serious opportunity for innovative methodological cognitive solutions as suggested at the end of this opinion piece.

[14] Brookings Institute.(2018). Education System Alignment for 21st Century Skills. Retrieved March, 2019 from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Education-system-alignment-for-21st-century-skills-012819.pdf

[15] Yes, you might be surprised by now that I find technologies exciting. I daily work with a number of digital “screens” and tools. Moreover, I dare to admit, I paradoxically also enjoy Star Trek. Thirdly, I spend my professional life designing solutions to offer pathways for the youngest learners to gain access to learning with and about technologies. So too coding, a skill I have been engaged in since I was about 13 yet which, since my later teens, with the odd exception in coding for the arts, I consciously moved away from.

[16] Research & Development (R&D) is continuously needed

[17] https://www.uethics.org/university

Contents

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