AI, Democracy, and the Importance of Asking the Right Questions

Democracy is widely praised as a great achievement of humanity. However, in recent years there has been an increasing amount of concern that its functioning across the world may be eroding. In response, efforts to combat such change are emerging. Considering the pervasiveness of technology and its increasing capabilities, it is no surprise that there has been much focus on the use of artificial intelligence(AI) to this end. Questions as to how AI can be best utilized to extend the reach of democracy to currently non-democratic countries, how the involvement in the democratic process of certain demographic groups (e.g. ethnic minorities, women, and young people) can be increased, etc. are frequent topics of discussion. In this article I would like not merely to question whether this is desirable but rather argue that we should be trying to envisage ways of using AI for the exact opposite purpose: that of replacing democratic systems with better alternatives.

Ethical Review in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning, has made significant strides in the past decade. Due to the widely applicable nature of this technology, the emergence of increasingly intelligent machines is poised to transform today’s society. Recently, the rate of AI development has aroused significant concerns due to the lack of guiding policy and regulation. Thus, it is integral for the public to recognize the technology and make informed choices regarding the future of AI. This paper serves to acquaint the layperson and other stakeholders involved in AI development with the current progress of AI and the ethical concerns that must be addressed before significant advancements. The subject of discussion is narrowed down to three fields of AI’s most prominent use: (1) the internet; (2) the automotive industry; and (3) the healthcare industry. For each sector, the foundation of the domain-specific AI technique is introduced, the benefits and ethical ramifications are discussed, and a final cost-benefit analysis is provided.

Good AI for the Present of Humanity Democratizing AI Governance

What do Cyberpunk and AI Ethics have to do with each other? Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that explores the post-human relationships between human experience and technology. One similarity between AI Ethics and Cyberpunk literature is that both seek to explore future social and ethical problems that our technological advances may bring upon society. In recent years, an increasing number of ethical matters involving AI have been pointed and debated, and several ethical principles and guides have been suggested as governance policies for the tech industry. However, would this be the role of AI Ethics? To serve as a soft and ambiguous version of the law? We would like to advocate in this article for a more Cyberpunk way of doing AI Ethics, with a more democratic way of governance. In this study, we will seek to expose some of the deficits of the underlying power structures of the AI industry, and suggest that AI governance be subject to public opinion, so that ‘good AI’ can become ‘good AI for all.’

How to Improve Fairness Perceptions of AI in Hiring: The Crucial Role of Positioning and Sensitization

Companies increasingly deploy artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in their personnel recruiting and selection processes to streamline them, thus making them more efficient, consistent, and less human biased (Chamorro-Premuzic, Polli, & Dattner, 2019) . However, prior research found that applicants prefer face-to-face interviews compared with AI interviews, perceiving them as less fair (e.g., Acikgoz, Davison, Compagnone, & Laske, 2020) . Additionally, emerging evidence exists that contextual influences, such as the type of task for which AI is used (Lee, 2018) , or applicants’ individual differences (Langer, König, Sanchez, & Samadi, 2019) , may influence applicants’ reactions to AI-powered selection. The purpose of our study was to investigate whether adjusting process design factors may help to improve people's fairness perceptions of AI interviews. The results of our 2 x 2 x 2 online study (N = 404) showed that the positioning of the AI interview in the overall selection process, as well as participants’ sensitization to its potential to reduce human bias in the selection process have a significant effect on people’s perceptions of fairness. Additionally, these two process design factors had an indirect effect on overall organizational attractiveness mediated through applicants’ fairness perceptions. The findings may help organizations to optimize their deployment of AI in selection processes to improve people’s perceptions of fairness and thus attract top talent.

Escaping the Western Cosm-Ethical Hegemony: The Importance of Cultural Diversity in the Ethical Assessment of Artificial Intelligence

The world of Artificial intelligence (AI) is struggling to set standards that would be globally applied. In this struggle, ethics is extensively summoned to regulate the development and use of AI systems, but also to promote vested interests. The potential benefits associated with AI are such that many actors, public and private, have entered a race for AI dominance led by the United States and China. In this context some actors, such as the European Union, are slowly taking over AI regulation and setting the limits regarding what is ethically acceptable and what is not. Aware of the power of norms, the West has slowly spread its normative influence all around the world, releasing hundreds of documents pertaining to ethical principles, and denying the reality of a world made of a diversity of ethical stances. To impose its own views on ethics applied to AI, the West has developed an ethical narrative transforming ethics into cosm-ethics, that is mere make up through communication. This paper aims at opening a debate on the reality of ethics applied to AI. It contextualizes the subject in a wider setting of race for AI dominance, stressing the Western ethical hegemony over AI established through a pseudo ethical narrative. To illustrate these points, it focuses on the case of the European Union, to eventually stress the urgent need for cultural pluralism in the field of ethics applied to AI.

Machine Learning Algorithms in Social Media: the Emergence of a Split Subject?

Machine learning algorithms are the most common way in which most people interact with artificial intelligence. Wide scale usage of Machine learning has grown dramatically during the last decade, particularly within social media platforms. Considering the almost three billion monthly active users at Facebook and that most of their services rely heavily on machine learning, the aim of this essay is to investigate some of the social and moral implications of ML algorithms employed in social media. Guided by the adage ‘we shape our tools and then they shape us’ the common thread among several varied effects of social media was the outsourcing of important social actions from our physical reality to a virtual one. And, with current ML algorithms being successfully utilised to increase user time expenditure, social media platforms are likely to operate as an amplifier of social media effects i.e., greater time expenditure leads to greater amounts of important social actions outsourced to virtual reality. Now, considering that such extraordinary change as could be wrought by a fourth industrial revolution has historically been accompanied by change in the philosophical subject, it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility that change is occurring once more. Yet, I posit the view that we are currently in an intermediary phase between the physical and virtual realities, that we stand today as split subjects. For, while devices like our phones, consoles, watches and computers mean we are always on, many important social actions remain in the physical real. Though, even the effects of a partial transformation of the subject are substantial, as the kind of splitting many of us do today is reminiscent of compartmentalization, a psychologically significant coping mechanism known for its corrosion of moral agency. As such, with a potentially transient contemporary subject and a variety of associated effects the split subject is rich ground for further research.

What a Philosopher Learned at an AI Ethics Evaluation

AI ethics increasingly focuses on converting abstract principles into practical action. This case study documents nine lessons for the conversion learned while performing an ethics evaluation on a deployed AI medical device. The utilized ethical principles were adopted from the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, and the conversion into practical insights and recommendations was accomplished by an independent team composed of philosophers, technical and medical experts.