#socialethics

The world is witnessing new epochs with the development of artificial intelligence. Yet, along with that, the ethical issues arising from its innovation and application should be immediately addressed. A skillful AI design involves the careful treatment of the different aspects to ensure that AI systems are beneficial for the society, justice, and transparency.

Key Ethical Considerations

1. Bias and Fairness

Through AI models, biases might be transmitted from the data that these models have been trained on. The initial step in this case bias removal which is required to ensure that the results are fair and equal among all.

2. Transparency and Explainability

The AIs should be made transparent and easily explainable about their decisions so that trust and safety can be built.

3. Privacy and Data Security

The main issues are user privacy protection and the careful treatment of personal data.

4. Job Displacement

AI's skilled job is the reason for certain tasks to be done in place of workers. Yet, the social and economic factors are among the variables to consider as well.

5. Autonomous Weapons

The increase of autonomous weapons has been a reason for us to reflect on some ethical questions and the ability of their exploitation.

6. Responsibility and Liability

The ethical issues that arise keep on being very complicated.

Promoting Ethical AI Development

Organizations and developers aiming to deal with these ethical challenges should:

1. Adopt Ethical Frameworks

Ethical rules that concern AI development should be followed.

2. Diversify Development Teams

Diversity is the AI team’s strength. By conducting a large number of teams from various backgrounds, one can successfully minimize bias.

3. Invest in Research

Carry out research to evaluate the animations of AI in society and ways to mitigate them.

4. Engage with Stakeholders

They need to get insights from the key stakeholders such as officials, ethicists, and the community.

5. Foster Transparency

AI should be discussed openly with the public and the capabilities and limitations of the technology should be revealed.

Nowadays the importance of civic sense in society has been lost in all the egos and the negative attitude among people. 

Mika Adarna September 14, 2015 CSRGOVE K33

(temp)

      Today’s activity concerning social ethics involved being divided into groups of 9. Groups 1, 2, and 3 discussed the first case, groups 4 and 5 talked about the second case, groups 6 and 7 talked about the third case, and lastly, groups 8 and 9 talked about the fourth case. The first case was about the company, Enron, manipulating its financial statement in hopes of boosting their chances in getting more investors. However, one vice president, whose name I cannot recall, was concerned about the matter and wanted to solve it through either (1) secretly correcting the financial statement through an auditing firm or (2) exposing the truth to the public. If I were the vice president, I would choose to correct the financial statements so that no dishonor will befall on my co-workers and company and after fixing the problem, I would then talk to the board of trustees of Enron about the issue in hopes that they will enforce proper judgement, reparation, and restitution to involved parties. The second case was about Maiden Mills, a company which manufactures Polartec Fabric which is used for outdoor apparels. In 1995, a fire broke out in the textile mill and destroyed most of it. The owner of Maiden Mills was able to recover some money because of his insurance. With that said, he was given the option to stay in the community or relocate to another one and the owner decided to stay in the community despite there being much higher costs and he gave paychecks to his employees until they could work again. The owner did the ethical thing of choosing the welfare of his employees over the benefits he would gain if he relocated his business. The third case,

      We were given different situations per case; I happened to be part of group 8 which took on the fourth case and the situation given was if I were to find an iPod on the floor in a classroom without anyone looking or knowing I just found it, would I keep it, return it, or just leave it? Our group unanimously reached the consensus of returning the iPod to the owner. We further discussed as to why we chose what we did and discovered that it is not because we fear the consequences that we decided to return the lost item but because of our strong sense of honesty and virtue to do what is right. I placed myself in the shoes of the one that lost the iPod and reflected on what would I feel if I had my belonging stolen from me, and I felt horrible; knowing how bad it would make me feel made me resolve that I would never want anyone to experience that kind of terrible feeling.