Experts like the Alan Turing Institute in the UK have long advocated the need for an impartial institution to oversee artificial intelligence projects and algorithms. The European Union has also recently proposed regulations.
This concern is so far-reaching that even the Church has decided to pronounce itself on it .
Call to Rome for the ethics of AI
Vatican officials have called for stricter ethical standards on the development of artificial intelligence. To do so, they presented the document call Rome for the ethics of IA (Rome calls for AI Ethics).
This document establishes six general principles in relation to the ethics of artificial intelligence : transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, and security and privacy.
These principles therefore emphasize that technology should “protect people”, particularly the “weak and disadvantaged”.
The Vatican wants to make sure that companies don’t use AI as a means to collect data without people’s consent and then use that data for commercial or political gain. Pope Francis himself considers that “this asymmetry, by which a few know everything about us while we know nothing about them, diminishes critical thinking and the conscious exercise of freedom.”
For this reason, Vatican officials also urge policy makers around the world to create new forms of regulation on “advanced technologies that have a greater risk of affecting human rights”, which is closely related to facial recognition technology. .
The document also states that a “duty of explanation” must be established and that algorithms based on AI must provide people with information about how the algorithms made their decisions to ensure that there are no biases, neither sexual, nor racial, nor of another kind. For example, Paul Mason , author of For a bright future , claims to decree an ethical use of algorithms, with an obligation to disclose them. “We have to oppose everything that reduces our conscious control over our work environment, or over our freedom of rational choice, or over our freedom in general. And not driven by technophobia, but by the desire to improve machines, to improve and make algorithms more transparent, to increase our control. “
For now, the document has already received support from IBM and Microsoft, but progressively, Vatican officials hope to increase the number of support for their AI ethics initiative in the coming months. They also hope to collaborate with universities around the world to promote more scientific research on ethical guidelines for AI, as they are considered a moral and ethical source for millions of believers who will also use these new technologies , or will be monitored by them.
After all, for people to accept and use artificial intelligence-based systems they need to be able to trust them and, furthermore, it is important that their autonomous AI decisions are not only legal, but also respect current moral codes. .
