The Uselessness of AI Ethics

In this discussion, Luke Munn and Erich Prem consider the apparent uselessness of AI ethics. As the awareness of AI’s power and danger has risen, the dominant response has been a turn to ethical principles. A flood of AI guidelines have been released in both the public and private sector in the last several years. Systematic reviews of these frameworks reveal that most of them are instances of principlism. Unfortunately, such principles are often meaningless and vague, they lack “teeth” or enforcement, and they are situated in an industry that often ignores ethics. The question then is how to leverage ethical principles, to move from what to how. There have been numerous proposals for tools, techniques, and algorithms to create ethical AI systems. Will this be the solution or will we need completely new pathways to building and operating AI systems that align with societal values? Speakers: Luke Munn (University of Queensland, Australia) and Erich Prem (Universität Wien & eutema, Austria) The Digital Humanism Lecture Series is funded by the Vienna Business Agency, a service offered by the City of Vienna, in cooperation with the Faculty of Informatics of TU Wien and TU Wien's Center for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (CAIML).