Giving Compass' Take:

· The Naked Scientists touches on a talk given by Jeroen van den Hoven where he addresses the desperate need for a universal framework and set of guidelines to regulate robotics and artificial intelligence in the digital age.

· Is artificial intelligence inherently bias? What values are programmed into robotics? 

· Learn about Canada's investment in research and creation of ethical artificial intelligence. 

Jeroen van den Hoven, professor of ethics and technology at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, was speaking at a session on ethics in science and technology at the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) 2018, which was held in Toulouse, France, from 9-14 July.

‘People are becoming aware that this digital age is not neutral…, it is presented to us mainly by big corporations who want to make some profit,’ he said.

He called for a Europe-wide network of institutions that can provide a set of values, based on the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, which the technology industry could operate within.

‘We have to set up, as we’ve done for food, for aviation and for traffic, … an elaborate system of institutions that will look (at) this field of artificial intelligence.

‘We need to think about governance, inspection, monitoring, testing, certification, classification, standardisation, education, all of these things. They are not there.  We need to desperately, and very quickly, help ourselves to it.’

Prof. van den Hoven is a member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), an independent advisory body for the European Commission, which organised the session he was speaking at.

In March, the EGE published a statement on artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and autonomous systems, which criticised the current ‘patchwork of disparate initiatives’ in Europe that try to tackle the social, legal and ethical questions that AI has generated. In the statement, the EGE called for the establishment of a structured framework.

Read the full article about guidelines for the digital age by Joanna Roberts at The Naked Scientists.