It's time to discuss ethics in this AI era

WE have made more progress in artificial intelligence (AI) in the last three years than in the preceding three decades. AI is transforming from handy little applications that make our lives easier (from Alexa and Siri to Uber and Netflix) to something more powerful that is reshaping the commercial world as we know it.

The founding editor of Wired, Kevin Kelly, has likened AI to electricity - a cheap, reliable, industrial-grade, digitally smart entity that is the invisible force keeping everything running. He adds that it "will enliven inert objects, much as electricity did more than a century ago. Everything that we formerly electrified, we will now cognitise".

But our growing dependency on AI highlights serious issues of accountability and respect for human sensitivities. Here are some of the key social and ethical considerations to think about: