AI ETHICS

DATA PRIVACY
AI BAIS
&
AI ACCESS
 WHAT IS AI ETHICS ?
Nowadays, we are moving from the
Information era to Artificial Intelligence era.
Now we do not use data or information, but
the intelligence collected from the data to
build solutions.
For Ex,
These solutions can even recommend the
next TV show or movies you should watch
on Netflix.
With these leading trends in the AI usage ,
we need to keep aspects relating to
ethical practices in mind while
“AI ethics refers to the basic
principles of AI system design that
use the good code of conduct and
produces the results. “

In other words, ethics means what is right and

unethical means what is wrong.
Moral Issues: Self-Driving Cars
Scenario 1:
Let us imagine that we are in year 2030. Self-Driving cars
which are just a concept in today’s time are now on roads.
People like us are buying them for ease and are using it
for our daily transits. Of-course because of all the features
which this car has, it is very expensive.
Now, let us assume, one day a person is going to office in
his self-driving car. He is sitting in the back seat as the car
is driving itself. Suddenly, a small boy comes in front of
this car. The incident was so sudden that the car is only
able to make either of the two choices:

1. Go straight and hit the boy who has come in front of the
car and injure him severely.
2. Take a sharp right turn to save the boy and smash the car
into a metal pole thus damaging the car as well as injuring
the person sitting in it.
With the help of this scenario, we need to
understand that the developer of the car goes
through all such dilemmas while developing the
car’s algorithm.

Thus, here the morality of the developer gets

transferred into the machine as what according to
him/her is right would have a higher priority and
hence would be the selection made by the
machine.
If you were in the place of this developer and if
there was no other alternative to the situation,

Which one of the two would you prioritize

and why?
Let us now assume that the car has hit the boy
who came in front of it. Considering this as an
accident, who should be held responsible for it?
Why?

1. The person who bought this car

2. The Manufacturing Company
3. The developer who developed the car’s
algorithm
4. The boy who came in front of the car and got
severely injured

Here, the choices might differ from person to

person and one must understand that nobody is
wrong in this case.
 Data Privacy
The world of Artificial Intelligence revolves around
Data. Every company whether small or big is
mining data from as many sources as possible.
More than 70% of the data collected till now has
been collected in the last 3 years which shows
how important data has become in recent times.
It is not wrongly said that “Data is the new
gold.”
This makes us think:
Where do we collect data from?

Why do we need to collect data?

One of the major sources of data for many major
companies is the device which all of us have in
our hands all the time:

Smart phones

Smart phones have nowadays become an integral

part of our lives. Most of us use smart phones
more than we interact with people around us.
Smart phones in today’s era provide us with a lot
of facilities and features which have made our
lives easier such as online food order , online
shopping , online travel and bookings , watching
online favorite shows etc.
Everything is available in this one small box loaded with
Another feature of smart phones nowadays is that they provide us
with customized recommendations and notifications according to our
choices. Let us understand this with the help of some examples:
1. When you are talking to your friend on a mobile network or
on an app like WhatsApp. You tell your friend that you wish to
buy new shoes and are looking for suggestions from him/her.
You discuss about shoes and that is it. After some time, the
online shopping websites start giving you notifications to buy
shoes! They start recommending some of their products and
urge you to you buy some.

2. If you search on Google for a trip to Kerala or any other

destination, just after the search, all the apps on your phone
which support advertisements, will start sending messages
about packages that you can buy for the trip.

3. Even when you are not using your phone and talking to a
person face-to-face about a book you’ve read recently while
the phone is kept in a locked mode nearby, the phone will end
up giving notifications about similar books or messages about
In all such examples, how does the smart phone get to know
about the discussions and thoughts that you have?

Remember whenever you download an app and install it, it

asks you for several permissions to access your phone’s
data in different ways. If you do not allow the app these
permissions, you normally cannot access it. And to access
the app and make use of it, we sometimes don’t even give it
a thought and allow the app to get all the permissions that it
wants.

Hence every now and then, the app has the permission to
access various sensors which are there in your smart phone
and gather data about you and your surroundings.

We forget that the smart phone which we use is a box full of

sensors which are powered all the time while the phone is
switched on.
We need to understand that the data which is collected
by various applications is ethical as the smart phone
users agree to it (by clicking on allow when it asks for
permission and by agreeing to all the terms and
conditions).

But at the same time if one does not want to share

his/her data with anyone, he/she can opt for alternative
applications which are of similar usage and keep your
data private.

For example, an alternative to Whats App is the

Telegram app which does not collect any data from us.
But since Whats App is more popular and used by the
crowd, people go for it without thinking twice.
 AI BAIS ?
Everyone has a bias of their own no matter how much
one tries to be unbiased, we in some way or the other
have our own biases even towards smaller things.
Biases are not negative all the time….

We know that it is artificial and cannot think on its own.

It can have intelligence, but we cannot expect a
machine to have any biases of its own. Any bias can
transfer from the developer to the machine while the
algorithm is being developed.
For Example :
 Majorly, all the virtual assistants have a female voice.
It is only now that some companies have understood
this bias and have started giving options for male
voices but since the virtual assistants came into
practice, female voices are always preferred.

 If you search on Google for salons, the first few

searches are mostly for female salons. This is based on
the assumption that if a person is searching for a salon,
in all probability it would be a female.
Do you think this is a bias? If yes, then is it a Negative bias or
Positive one?
Various other biases are also found in various systems
which are not thought up by the machine but have got
transferred from the developer intentionally or
 AI ACCESS
Since Artificial Intelligence is still a budding technology,
not everyone has the opportunity to access it. The
people who can afford AI enabled devices make the
most of it while others who cannot are left behind.
Because of this, a gap has emerged between these two
classes of people.

AI creates unemployment :
AI is making people’s lives easier. Most of the things
nowadays are done in just a few clicks. In no time AI will
manage to be able to do all the laborious tasks which
we humans have been doing since long. Maybe in the
coming years, AI enabled machines will replace all the
people.
This may start an era of mass unemployment.
 AI ACCESS
Since Artificial Intelligence is still a budding technology,
not everyone has the opportunity to access it. The
people who can afford AI enabled devices make the
most of it while others who cannot are left behind.
Because of this, a gap has emerged between these two
classes of people.

AI creates unemployment :
AI is making people’s lives easier. Most of the things
nowadays are done in just a few clicks. In no time AI will
manage to be able to do all the laborious tasks which
we humans have been doing since long. Maybe in the
coming years, AI enabled machines will replace all the
people.
This may start an era of mass unemployment.
 AI for kids
As we all can see, kids nowadays are smart enough to
understand technology from a very early age. As their
thinking capabilities increase, they start becoming
techno-savvy and eventually they learn everything
more easily than an adult.

But should technology be given to children so young?

Consider this: A young boy in class 3 has got some
Maths homework to finish. He is sitting at a table which
has the Google chat bot - Alexa on it, and he is
struggling with his homework. Soon, he starts asking
Alexa to answer all his questions. Alexa replies with
answers and the boy simply writes them down in his
notebook.
While this scenario seems funny, it still has some
concerns related to it. On one hand where it is good
that the boy knows how to use technology effectively,
on the other hand he uses it to complete his homework
without really learning anything since he is not applying
his brain to solve the Math problems. So, while he is
smart, he might not be getting educated properly.

Is it ethical to let the boy use technology to help in this

manner?