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AI significant potential but ethics must be the starting point says OECD

September 17, 2019
Sustainability

Artificial intelligence – or AI – has the potential to radically transform our lives in a multitude of areas, from education to health, transport, communication and energy.

Already, AI-driven neural networks are being trialled for tasks as diverse and ranging in significance as detecting heart failure to ordering hamburgers.

But the fast-moving developments in the umbrella of technologies that define AI is also fuelling mass anxiety over the future of jobs as well as major concern over the huge potential for AI to be misused and abused in the wrong hands.

At a London Business School event, Ángel Gurría, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), said that to realise the huge positive potential of AI, ethics had to be at the centre of its use.

“To realise the full potential of this promising technology, we need one critical ingredient,” he said.

“That critical ingredient is trust. And to build trust we need human-centred artificial intelligence that fosters sustainable development and inclusive human progress – and I stress the word inclusive,” he said.

Gurría was speaking on the topic “AI for Sustainable Development” at a gathering organised by the School’s Wheeler Institute for Business and Development.

“AI holds significant potential to drive productivity gains,” he told his audience. “It can also help us meet our global ambitions, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals… the most ambitious set of goals and targets and indicators that mankind has set for itself.

“They are helping people make better predictions… whether they are a doctor or shop floor manager or farmer in a field.

“For workers, technological change presents great opportunities. It can help them with their productivity. It can help them to improve their earnings. It can also reduce exposure to dangerous, unhealthy and tedious tasks.”

But the OECD estimates that across its 36 member countries, over the next 10 or 15 years, such changes threaten the very existence of around 14 percent of today’s jobs.

A further third of the workforce “will suffer very serious disruptions in their workplace,” said Gurría.

Put these two groups together, and the OECD Secretary General believes “you’re talking practically half of the workforce who are going to suffer some kind of consequence.”

The risks that AI could make the world worse, faster

Low-skilled workers are particularly vulnerable to the impact of automation – and this in a world where life-long learning is imperative to cope with change, Gurría said.

These workers with fewer skills “are on average… 40 percent less likely to participate in adult learning than the high-skilled workers in the OECD countries.

“The ones who need [life-long learning], most have 40 percent less chances of actually getting it. So, the inequalities will tend to increase rather than shrink, and therefore is it something that policy has to address.”

There is a risk that the increased use of AI could exacerbate current trends. A generation ago, the richest 10 percent of people in OECD countries had incomes seven times greater than those of the poorest 10 percent.

Now, the gap is even greater – the ratio is ten-to-one.

“It means that in one generation – 30 years, something like that – inequality has increased by 30-to-40 percent,” said Gurría. “It’s going very fast in the wrong direction.”

There must be an ethical dimension to the exploitation of AI’s potential, Gurría said.

AI can help achieve wonderful things such as improving productivity, extending product life and minimising waste to make people’s lives better.

But it is only a tool. “Ethics is the starting point… that divides what you should do and what you should not do with this kind of knowledge and information and technology.

“Because in the end, that’s what it is – it’s just technology, a tool. What you do with it depends on you, depends on us and has to do with the policies that we adopt.”

In May, the OECD launched its recommendations on AI. “The idea was to promote the responsible stewardship of what we call trustworthy artificial intelligence.”

Later this year, the OECD is launching its AI Observatory to develop practical guidance for policymakers “focusing on the interplay between AI and productivity, jobs, skills and trust with a big capital T. The trust, the trust, the trust!

“We’re also working on the labour market challenges having to do with AI.”

He added: “We must harness the efficiency and intelligence of AI to build a better world where growth is inherently sustainable but it’s also inclusive and therefore benefits all. So let’s give the people the tools. Remember, it’s tools. This is not a policy in and of itself.

Artificial intelligence can help us if we apply it well. Give people the tools to succeed in the world of tomorrow. Let’s use this potential to protect our planet. Let’s harness progress in innovation to make it people-centred.”

Inclusive growth ‘good for business’

Gurría was asked by Rajesh Chandy, one of the academic directors of the Wheeler Institute what advice he would give to the assembled London Business School students.

Gurría replied: “Being privileged of the world means there are many more billions and billions and billions who are less fortunate than we are and we owe them.

“We need human-centred artificial intelligence that fosters sustainable development and inclusive human progress.”

“We owe them to go beyond our self-interest in order to make their world a little better also, as we make – very legitimately – our own world better.

“I’m not telling you that everybody has to turn into Mother Teresa,” he said. But for the less fortunate, there is need to “go the extra mile, to make the extra effort.”

He pointed out that the US Business Roundtable, which brings together chief executives of large US corporations, has recently released a new statement on corporate purpose that replaces shareholders with all stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, employees, the community in which the business operates and also shareholders. This was signed by 181 CEOs.

“This means to take into account the environment in which you work, the society in which you work, the people that work for you, the people for whom you work and the fact that not only your employees but also the town, or the city or the metropolis, the country in which you operate – or the countries in which multinationals operate – are the core of the concern of your company.

“And the important thing is that these objectives are not in collision. The fact of the matter is, today, that if you don’t fight the growing inequalities (and that starts with the companies), it’s bad for business.”

Mirroring that approach, at a gathering of 34 companies under the umbrella of Business for Inclusive Growth (B4IG), leaders of large businesses gave a pledge to fight inequalities, whether gender, racial or other. “Inequalities are addressed by inclusive growth,” said Gurría. But inclusive growth does not happen automatically.

“Inclusive growth happens if everybody has the same – equal – opportunities.The opportunities should be more equal rather than so brutally unequal as they are today.”

“Somebody who is better-educated will have better health, will therefore have a better life and will tend to get the best jobs, and therefore will get better remunerated.”

He added: “What we have done is we have built into the system today a mechanism that actually accelerates, accentuates inequalities. So, it is these very smart CEOs who are saying it can’t go on anymore because this is unsustainable. So, it’s self-preservation just as much as it’s enlightenment and generosity.”

“If you just continue stretching the rubber band, one day, it snaps. And then you break the social order. If you have enough people who are angry, you suddenly start seeing disruptions.”

Gurría emphasised that ethics should always be a consideration in how a business is run..

“Many of the things we do in the pursuit of profit and progress and productivity – most of them are absolutely legitimate.”

“But I think it is when it comes to affecting other people’s lives,that is where it stops, where the limit should be drawn.It doesn’t really take an ethics officer. But if you believe at some point that there’s conflict within the company, maybe you should propose that there be one or become one yourself.”

Developing countries can exploit new technologies to secure huge leaps in their development, he added.

“They can be so powerful to generate faster progress on education, faster progress on healthNow we have drones that deliver medical supplies to places that are not accessible by regular services or roads or whatever during monsoon seasons.”

“You use these very advanced systems in order to get there to deliver diagnoses to deliver better education systems that can thenaccelerate the learning process. And then you can also accelerate the evaluations of the process.

“I would say that the poorer a country is, the more we should insist on using it.”

Gurría concluded: “You use technology to make things green, to make things inclusive and you use technology to make things more robust, more reliable and provide a better service.”

By Ben Laurance

Source: London Business School

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