Google DeepMind's new business unit to assess AI's impact on society

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By Matthew Griffin Intelligence and the Senses 31st October 2017

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

There are many controversial, and polarised, views on the impact that AI will have on society, this new business unit, which is one of the first of its kind, will hopefully help clear some of the weeds

In a move to counter the run in it had with the UK government last year, Google owned DeepMind has decided to form a new business unit called DeepMind Ethics and Society (DMES) that will look into the ethical and moral implications and impact that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having, and will have on society, in the hope that it will help them better judge when AI is pushing the boundaries too hard, too fast and too far.

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DeepMind is considered to be one of the heavyweights in the AI industry and in the past eighteen months it’s taught it’s platform how to beat the world champion Go player, and annihilate online Go players, think like a human, dream and fight other AI’s for resources, lipread, talk and translate, and much much more. But that said it’s also had a few run ins with Government, particularly the UK Government.

In 2015 it agreed a data-sharing deal with three hospitals in the UK to process the data of 1.6 million patients for “new methods of clinical detection, diagnosis and prevention application,” but the project went awry when the NHS regulator said the deal had breached data protection laws.

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In response, DeepMind said it was “working hard” on data transparency both internally and externally, and the new committee seems to be the fruit of its labours. In the blog post explaining the formation of DMES, DeepMind notes that, “As scientists developing AI technologies, we have a responsibility to conduct and support open research and investigation into the wider implications of our work.”

That indicates that it believes it needs to take a stronger role in regulating how it applies its powerful algorithms to situations where it doesn’t have much expertise. This particularly comes into play when considering the NHS debacle, where DeepMind said it “underestimated the rules around patient data” and the “complexity of the NHS.”

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The new business unit is DeepMind’s attempt to demonstrate that the company cares about AI’s impact on society, and not just the tech industry, in both the long and the short term, and as the company says in its blog post, the ethical considerations of AI is not a new thing. It highlights Julia Angwin’s groundbreaking study of the ethical quandary of racism in criminal justice algorithms, in short, looking at how algorithms are racist against people of colour in criminal justice situations, and Kate Crawford and Ryan Calo’s in depth paper on how AI impacts society on wider, broader scale.

To help DeepMind with this issue they’ve enlisted the help of six fellows, including Nick Bostrom, the University of Oxford professor who wrote the book of existential risk that influenced both Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.