One of first ethics centers to participate
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics was named today as one of 21 new members of the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society. The Partnership focuses on artificial intelligence, bringing together companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple, with academic and research organizations and nonprofits, to collaborate on addressing common concerns.
"Artificial intelligence presents a fast-growing range of difficult ethical challenges for American and global society," said Center Executive Director Kirk Hanson. "The Ethics Center has demonstrated it can address rapidly developing ethical challenges and make productive contributions to how they are handled by organizations and governments."
As partnership Founders Eric Horvitz and Mustafa Suleyman describe their goal in creating the organization, “We designed the Partnership on AI, in part, so that we can invest more attention and effort on harnessing AI to contribute to solutions for some of humanity’s most challenging problems, including making advances in health and wellbeing, transportation, education, and the sciences.”
The efforts of the Partnership on AI are organized around a set of thematic pillars, which currently include:
- Safety-Critical AI
- Fair, Transparent, and Accountable AI
- Collaborations Between People and AI Systems
- AI, Labor, and the Economy
- Social and Societal Influences on AI
- AI and Social Good
- Special Initiatives
During the week of October 23, the Board of Directors and representatives from the Partners organizations met in Berlin to begin work on some of the goals outlined above. Assistant Director of Campus Ethics Brian Green, shown here, represented the Center at the meeting.
"The Partnership on AI is an organization built on the ethical ideal that AI should benefit people and society. From my experience at the recent PAI meeting in Berlin, I know that this ethical ideal really is the driving force bringing all the very diverse partners together, in the hope that AI can be used for great good, and that AI's evil uses can be avoided," Green said. "Given PAI's ethical mission, the Ethics Center is in exactly the right place, in the middle of great people representing great organizations, who want to deeply engage ethical questions and improve the world."
See the full list of Founding Partners.