Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for many decades but now it has become a buzzword even among non-technical people because of the generative AI models like ChatGPT, Bard, Scribe, Claude, DALL·E 2, and a lot more. AI has moved beyond its sci-fi origins to reality, creating human-like content and powering self-driving cars. However, despite having extraordinary potential, irresponsible use of AI can lead to bias, discrimination, infringements on privacy, and other societal harms.
Considering rising ethical concerns and other potential risks posed by AI-generated content, many governments, including the Biden administration and the European Union, are establishing guidelines and frameworks to ensure the safe and responsible development and use of AI applications. Here we will discuss ethical issues raised by generative AI models and some proven solutions to them.
Ethical concerns raised by gen AI models
The evolution of generative AI has led to a rapid rise in the number of lawsuits related to the development and use of these applications. Here are a few critical ethical concerns influenced by AI technology.
Societal bias and discrimination
The content generated by AI models is as good as the training data. As a result, outcomes produced by models trained on poor-quality training data can be biased and discriminatory, and instigate public backlash, costly legal battles, and brand damage.
A report published in Bloomberg reveals widespread gender and racial biases in around 8,000 occupational images created by three popular AI applications viz. Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL-E 2.
Deepfakes
AI tools can be used to create convincing image, audio, and video hoaxes. The content created by sophisticated models is often indistinguishable from the real one. Deepfakes are being used to spread hate speech, mislead people, and distort public opinion.
Copyright issues
Generative AI applications trained on data scraped from online sources have been accused of copyright and intellectual property infringement.
AI Regulations
Many governments, including the European Union(EU) and the Biden administration, have proposed regulatory frameworks for artificial intelligence.
- EU AI regulations: The bill proposed by the European Union to regulate the use of AI underscores guardrails by enforcement agencies on the adoption of AI applications within the EU countries, restrictions on AI use for user manipulation, and limitations for the use of biometric identification tools. Consumers can file complaints against any violation or invasion of their privacy. The law also proposes financial penalties of up to EUR 35 million or 7% of a company’s global turnover for non-compliance with the regulations.
- White House Executive Order on AI: The Executive Order (or EO) on AI issued by US President Biden focuses on the safe, secure, and reliable development and use of AI tools. New standards for responsible adoption of AI have been outlined in the order, along with guidelines for the protection of intellectual property and user privacy.
Strategies for a Safe and Secure AI Application
Following are some strategies to mitigate the ethical and security challenges of AI applications.
- External audits: Companies building AI models need to work in partnership with an AI data solutions company, like Cogito Tech, for external audits. Cogito’s Red teaming service offers adversarial testing, vulnerability analysis, bias auditing, and response refinement solutions.
- Licensed training data: Licensed training data can ward off copyright and intellectual property infringement issues. Licensed data is procured through legal process in compliance with copyright laws. Cogito offers DataSum service to address ethical challenges in AI for complex data governance and compliance needs.
Final words
Artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, has revolutionized the way we interact with technology in the last couple of years. It holds extraordinary potential to make businesses more productive, innovative, and secure. However, misuse of AI or a data-biased AI model can trigger an array of ethical and security concerns including bias, discrimination, breach of copyright and privacy, disinformation, and even pose risks to national security.
It is crucial to recognize and address these challenges to harness AI for good and realize its great benefits.
