Giving Compass' Take:

• Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart, discusses how we need to establish more regulations around artificial intelligence as it becomes more prevalent and normalized in society. 

• One of the recommendations is to demand more transparency from AI development companies. Why will this be a challenging task, and how can funders help this process?

• Read about how we can do more to teach students about AI. 

Pictures from people’s houses can predict the chances of that person getting into a car accident. The researchers that created the system acknowledged that “modern data collection and computational techniques…allow for unprecedented exploitation of personal data, can outpace development of legislation and raise privacy threats.”

Hong Kong researchers created a drone system that can automatically analyze a road surface. It suggests that we’re approaching the era of automated surveillance for civil and military purposes. In lower Manhattan, police are planning a surveillance center where officers can view thousands of video cameras around the downtown.

These examples illustrate, we’ve entered an era of high surveillance with an emerging set of benefits and threats.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about the potential benefits of safe streets and cheaper insurance. But it’s time to pump the breaks on 24/7 surveillance and put a few agreements in place. Here are four next steps.

  1. Cities and counties running closed circuit TV should be transparent where and why surveillance is used, when videos are recorded, how long are they retained and under what conditions they are shared with other government agencies and what punishments would apply to violators.
  2. Second, we need national agreements on when and how facial recognition will be used–and it has to get better for all groups before it’s used in security application.
  3. Third, schools need to add video to digital literacy education and engage students in exploring the ethics of 24/7 surveillance in a course on exponential technology.
  4. Finally, and perhaps most challenging, it’s time for companies, trade groups and standards bodies to set agreements about the diversity and transparency in AI development and deployment–especially in surveillance.

Read the full article about the ethics of artificial intelligence everywhere by Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart.