The expansion of AI (artificial intelligence) causes an unusual movement among companies like Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft: requests for regulation, accompanied by the disclosure of specific rules for the use of technology.
With tech companies in the spotlight after multiple privacy scandals, gaining public trust for AI appears as a motivator for trying to share the responsibility for regulating the area.
"If people don't trust AI, then we risk wasting all of the benefits it can bring," said Michael Philips, who heads policy development for this technology at Microsoft.
For Italian Luciano Floridi, professor of philosophy and information ethics at the University of Oxford, the interest of technology giants in regulation in the sector may be motivated by the desire to be clear about what is right and wrong. The presence of common rules, he says, is what allows the competition.
An article published in January in the "Wall Street Journal" compares the movement to that of other industries in the past, particularly insurance and oil. Seeing that regulation is inevitable, companies support the creation of rules publicly while working behind the scenes to influence how they are made.
In the discourse, although the approaches and rules of the technological giants vary slightly, what they have in common is to preach fair and transparent AI.
"We make a lot of decisions, and we shouldn't make so many decisions alone without the presence of public debate," said Norberto Andrade, global leader for digital ethics and AI policies on Facebook. "Ethical questions do not have to be answered only by companies. We need to reach consensus as a society."
Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of AI at AWS (Amazon's cloud computing company), is a chorus of Andrade. "It is very easy to say 'such a person should not be able to use this technology.' But, if it is in accordance with the laws of the country where she lives, it is not up to us to say what they should or should not do", he said.
Jeff Dean, director of AI at Google, says he thinks it reasonable for countries to adopt different rules from each other. "We are already seeing this happen."
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon