Increasing apprehension about the threat of AI techniques to data security and privacy has led Facebook to make a grant of $7.5 million towards the foundation of a new and independent AI ethics research Center.
Joaquin Candela, Facebook’s director of applied learning, wrote in a blog post that “AI poses complex problems which industry alone cannot answer, and the independent academic contributions of the Institute will play a crucial role in furthering ethical research on these topics.”
Ryan Daws filed this report in AI News:
The new research center is called the Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence and was created in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM).
Facebook, like many companies, is fighting outside concerns about the development of AI and its potential societal impact. The center should help to ensure Facebook keeps up with ethical best practices.
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Dr. Christoph Lütge, TUM Professor and head of the institute, commented:
“At the TUM Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, we will explore the ethical issues of AI and develop ethical guidelines for the responsible use of the technology in society and the economy. Our evidence-based research will address issues that lie at the interface of technology and human values. Core questions arise around trust, privacy, fairness or inclusion, for example, when people leave data traces on the internet or receive certain information by way of algorithms. We will also deal with transparency and accountability, for example in medical treatment scenarios, or with rights and autonomy in human decision-making in situations of human-AI interaction.”
