Interesting to watch AI industry executives ask Congress to regulate their companies, thus indicating that the burden is not on the executives to stop themselves from “running down hallway of humanity with scissors”.

Seriously, we should expect more. 

We expect as a virtuous society that industry run by humans would be interested in humanity and ethical responsibility.. right?

It is not enough to burden society and politicians, ill equipped to understand the nuances of AI, to fully police technology that evolves faster then laws can be written so it is therefore, incumbent on the industry to pull its head out of the sand and control that which they know could harm humanity.

Perhaps some hints have been given by some well-meaning companies and organizations, but what we need immediately is self-scoring and brake-systems to require companies to stop themselves from plausible or unplausible deniability. 

Let’s look at a few hints and then discuss some options.

Hints on self-policing AI:

In 2019, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its “Recommendation of the Council on Artificial Intelligence” including five (5) guidelines. The guidelines are:

• Inclusive growth, sustainable development, and well-being
• Human-centred values and fairness
• Transparency and explainability
• Robustness, security, and safety
• Accountability

On March 29, 2023, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology by Command of His Majesty presented a Policy paper “A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation” which stated that their framework is underpinned by 5 principles to guide and inform the responsible development and use of AI in all sectors of the economy:

• Safety, security, and robustness
• Appropriate transparency and explainability
• Fairness
• Accountability and governance
• Contestability and redress

On April 25, 2023,  the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a “Joint Statement On Enforcement Efforts Against Discrimination And Bias In Automated Systems”  which concluded:

“Today, our agencies reiterate our resolve to monitor the development and use of automated systems and promote responsible innovation. We also pledge to vigorously use our collective authorities to protect individuals’ rights regardless of whether legal violations occur through traditional means or advanced technologies.”

In February of this year, Microsoft released a blog “ Meeting the AI moment: advancing the future through responsible AI” stating: 

“This transformative moment for AI calls for a wider lens on the impacts of the technology – both positive and negative – and a much broader dialogue among stakeholders. We need to have wide-ranging and deep conversations and commit to joint action to define the guardrails for the future.”

Options:

Obviously, the AI industry wants governance and just as obvious is that regulators and lawmakers will be outpaced advances in AI before meaningful regulation can occur. As Socrates might say “we must struggle to find a solution”. 

It is the responsibility of the companies working in AI to self-govern and to, as Bill Gates might say, “put themselves under a microscope”.  To do so, there are simple guardrails that must be put in place now. 

Much like the payment card industry, the privacy industry,  and security industries have developed frameworks such as PCI DSS compliance, or Data Privacy Impact Assessments ( “DPIA”), or the  National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity framework, the AI industry can also form self-governing frameworks to stop AI from adverse behavior by asking such questions as:

At meldCX...

While this article raises more questions than answers, we at MeldCX are committed to self-govern and put in guardrails not to adversely impact any human rights. To that end our product Viana, allows businesses to consume machine vision, artificial intelligence data through anonymized behavioral patterns without identification of any humans. 

In terms of data privacy and security, meldCX has attained TRUSTe’s Enterprise Privacy & Data Governance Practices Certification, having demonstrated compliance with globally recognized frameworks such as GDPR and ISO 27001. Across meldCX’s range of products, end customers can be rest assured that their data is treated with utmost integrity and personal data privacy is held to the strictest standards.

For more information about meldCX products, please reach out to marketing@meldcx.com.