Oversize #26: Ethical AI debate goes from classroom to boardroom

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Editor's note: In the past few years, ubiquitous connectivity and the consumerization of technology has led to the emergence of big data. Organizations have tried to leverage this data to drive automation and data-driven decision-making to improve business outcomes. However, humans have their cognitive biases, and these inherent biases end up finding expression in our data. And since data is the foundation for all machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence efforts, the applications of these technologies can potentially amplify and scale these human biases. To the point where there is a debate now around the ethics of AI. Derived from the Greek word ethos which can mean custom, habit, character or disposition, ethics is a system of moral principles. Through history, our concepts of ethics have been derived from religions, philosophies and cultures within the context of human rights, business and economics and politics, among others. The ethics of artificial intelligence is essentially a branch of the ethics of technology specific to artificially intelligent systems, including both the moral behaviour of humans that build and use AI systems as well as the …