Hi All, Today the AI Now Institute published our *third annual report <https://ainowinstitute.org/AI_Now_2018_Report.html>* on the state of AI in 2018, including 10 recommendations for governments, researchers, and industry practitioners. The AoIR community has been thinking deeply through these issues, and we're excited to share this work with you (many of whom are cited in the report!). - Read the Report (PDF) <https://ainowinstitute.org/AI_Now_2018_Report.html> - See the Recommendations <https://medium.com/@AINowInstitute/after-a-year-of-tech-scandals-our-10-recommendations-for-ai-95b3b2c5e5> It has been a dramatic year in AI <https://medium.com/@AINowInstitute/ai-in-2018-a-year-in-review-8b161ead2b4e>.
From Facebook potentially inciting ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, to Cambridge Analytica seeking to manipulate elections, to Google building a secret censored search engine for the Chinese, to anger over Microsoft contracts with ICE, to multiple worker uprisings over conditions Amazon’s algorithmically managed warehouses – the headlines haven’t stopped. And these are just a few examples among hundreds.
At the core of these cascading AI scandals are questions of accountability: who is responsible when AI systems harm us? How do we understand these harms, and how do we remedy them? Where are the points of intervention, and what additional research and regulation is needed to ensure those interventions are effective? Currently there are few answers to these questions, and existing regulatory frameworks fall well short of what’s needed. As the pervasiveness, complexity, and scale of these systems grow, this lack of meaningful accountability and oversight – including basic safeguards of responsibility, liability, and due process – is an increasingly urgent concern. Building on our 2016 <https://ainowinstitute.org/AI_Now_2016_Report.html> and 2017 <https://ainowinstitute.org/AI_Now_2017_Report.html> reports, the AI Now 2018 Report <https://ainowinstitute.org/AI_Now_2018_Report.html> contends with this central problem, and provides 10 practical recommendations that can help create accountability frameworks capable of governing these powerful technologies. We look forward to hearing your thoughts! Best, Sarah -- *Dr. Sarah Myers West* Postdoctoral Researcher AI Now Institute New York University sarah@ainowinstitute.org | @sarahbmyers