Google AI: Opportunities, Risks, and Ethical Challenges

Abstract

Emerging technologies (ET) are novel and relatively fast-growing technologies that can have massive socio-economic impact and bring new ethical and regulatory challenges. Although they cannot be considered as new technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and related data driven technologies are examples of ET. AI is advancing at a rapid pace, in both public and private sectors, and being more widely deployed in different domains, including healthcare and education.

In today’s digital age, our societies are facing rapid and massive technological transformations. It is important to ensure that the behavior of AI systems is beneficial to humanity. Policymakers and the research community need to identify the greatest barriers to AI adoption and related risks. In recent years, Google’s plans and visions to use ET gained serious and intense criticism. This situation pushed Google in March 2019 to announce an AI ethics panel which is supposed to offer guidance on ethical issues relating to AI, machine learning, and related technologies. This AI ethics panel was shut down just days after it was launched. The episode illustrates how ethical debates relating to ET are often characterized by ambiguity, dishonesty, and demagoguery. In this paper, I discuss the ethics of ET, focusing on Google and its AI platform.

Keywords:

• Emerging technologies
• ethics of technology
• machine ethics
• artificial intelligence
• Google AI
• technology adoption

Notes

1 See p. 127 of Justin Coffey and Edward Coffey, “The Emerging Story of Emerging Technologies in Neuropsychiatry.” Dialogues. Clinical Neurosciences, vol. 18, no. 2, 2016, pp. 127–134; Donald E. Fetterolf, “Estimating the Economic Value of Emerging Technologies in Chronic Wound Therapy.” International Wound Journal, vol. 16, no. 6, 3 Sept. 2019. ResearchGate, doi:10.1111/iwj.13202. Accessed 8 Dec. 2019; p. 134 of B. Behera et al., “Emerging Technologies for Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing.” Biosensors & Bioelectronics, vol. 142, 1 Oct. 2019. PubMed – NCBI, doi:10.1016/j.bios.2019.111552. Accessed 18 Sept. 2019.

2 See p. 633 of Raji Srinivasan, “Sources, Characteristics and Effects of Emerging Technologies: Research Opportunities in Innovation.” Industrial Marketing Management, vol. 37, Aug. 2008, pp. 633–640. ScienceDirect, doi: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2007.12.003. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019; p. 57 of George S. Day et al., Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2000.

3 See Mariette DiChristina and Bernard S. Meyerson, “Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2019: Introduction.” Scientific American, 1 July, 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2019-introduction/. Accessed 18 Sept. 2019; and p. 1 of Don Scheibenreif, “5 Key Emerging Technologies and Their Impact on Customer Experience.” Gartner, 8 Aug. 2019, https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3956088/5-key-emerging-technologies-and-their-impact-on-customer. Accessed 18 Sept. 2019.

4 See p. 34 of M. E. Maron, Artificial Intelligence and Brain Mechanisms. Rand Corp., 1963.

5 Seraya Maouche, Ethics and Integrity. http://ethics-and-integrity.org/. Accessed 8 Dec. 2019.

6 “The CNIL’S Restricted Committee Imposes a Financial Penalty of 50 Million Euros Against GOOGLE LLC.” CNIL.fr., 21 Jan. 2019, https://www.cnil.fr/en/cnils-restricted-committee-imposes-financial-penalty-50-million-euros-against-google-llc. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.

7 Davide Castelvecchi, “Google Unveils Search Engine for Open Data.” Nature, vol. 561, 5 Sept. 2018, pp. 161–162. Nature.com, doi:10.1038/d41586-018-06201-x. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019; Jan Piasecki et al., “Google Search as an Additional Source in Systematic Reviews.” Sci Eng Ethics, vol. 24, no. 2, Apr. 2018, pp. 809–810. PubMed- NCBI, doi:10.1007/s11948-017-0010-4. Accessed 8 Dec. 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Seraya Maouche

Seraya Maouche is a researcher in bioinformatics and omics of cardiovascular diseases, computer science engineer, life-sciences entrepreneur, and tech/sciences writer. She contributed, in France, Germany, and within EU-funded research projects, to multiple studies using large-scale technologies to study the genomics of cardiovascular diseases. Her research interests include translational bioinformatics, cardiovascular genomics, Omics Big Data, AI, and e-health. She founded TBi Scientific^®, a start-up dedicated to translational bioinformatics, precision medicine, and Big Data. She also co-founded Ethique & Intégrité, a non-profit organization that works on research integrity, ethics of emerging technologies, and women in sciences.