AI for good - Growing role of corporates in the tech world
Companies such as Facebook, Microsoft and Tesla have increasingly emerged as an important voice in the debates on managing the challenges and technological developments of the digital age.
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LAST week, more than 2,600 scientists and entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk of Tesla and Demis Hassabis of Google's DeepMind, issued a pledge promising not to join any effort that develops killer robots. Although the campaign against the so-called "lethal autonomous weapons", based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), has been gaining ground in recent years, this is the first time that some tech leaders have individually undertaken to abstain from such work.
In a statement issued in Stockholm at the 2018 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), the tech leaders called upon governments to "create a future with strong international norms, regulations and laws against lethal autonomous weapons". Noting that such norms do not exist at the moment, they decided to hold themselves to a high standard: "We will neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade or use of lethal autonomous weapons. We ask that technology companies and organisations, as well as leaders, policymakers and other individuals join us in this pledge."
The declaration followed open protests in May this year from Google employees objecting to the company's work for the US Defence Department. But not everyone believes that voluntary restraint on the part of individuals and corporations can stop turning new knowledge into weapons. After all, the story of the link between swords and plowshares is as old as man.
