DIGITAL ETHICS – It is not all about legal compliance

CAIDE Co-Director Professor Jeannie Paterson will be speaking on the panel 'Digital Ethics - It's not all about Compliance' on Tuesday 24 May for the 150th Anniversary of Trinity College.

The following is supporting evidence for Professor Paterson's talk on the panel.

Usage of artificial intelligence (‘AI’) and digital technologies in corporate and public spaces are on the rise, promising to improve our lives and prompt more effective, efficient, and accurate decisions. Often the deployment of such tools is promoted on the basis of plausible, welfare enhancing and socially beneficial goals. But the technologies may simply not be ‘good’ and may infringe many social, policy and ethical values. The primary governing law in this domain is privacy protection law. Can mere legal compliance on privacy policies surrounding data-collection ensure that these machines are up to all good? Or do the responsible people, business and government need to engage with AI ethics and aspire to model best practice? How do business and government even do this? What are the responsibilities of advisers, boards, and officers? As a context for considering these issues, consider, for example, the following scenarios (all based on real world scenarios): -

1. Using algorithms to make hiring decisions could make the process more streamlined and help identify important predictors of performance that humans could miss, but what if they are biased against women?

   https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2020/december/entry-barriers-for-women-are-amplified-by-ai-in-recruitment-algorithms,-study-finds

2. Using facial recognition technology to identify shoplifters at clothing and retail outlets could enhance security and mitigate losses, but what if you are misidentified as a shoplifter and are banned from entering all stores in the country?

   https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/with-facial-recognition-shoplifting-may-get-you-banned-in-places-youve-never-been/

3. Employer-issued fitness trackers are cool and are, perhaps, the need of the hour. But what if your biometric and health data is used by your employer to make firing and promotion decisions?

   https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/17/why-companies-are-tracking-the-fitness-of-their-employees

4. Instagram and Snapchat filters could be fun on a Friday night. But what if your surgeon relies on them to help advise clients about the kind of surgery they might want?https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/06/ai-powered-app-tell-you-beautiful-reinforce-biases