AI: ethics must be the starting point – OECD

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.”