We Use AI and AI Uses Us: Five Everyday AI Ethics Concerns (part 3 of 4)
Week 3 of my 4-part series on everyday ethical AI for the She Leads AI newsletter
This post is the third in the series of articles on Everyday Ethical AI that I was invited to share in the weekly She Leads AI newsletter. Please see SheLeadsAI.ai to subscribe to “The SLAI Effect”, and do check out their events, including the weekly Social Saturday calls!
Last week, I shared five everyday AI & data risks that we all face at home or work. Now let’s take a quick look at why ethical concerns are emerging more often in discussions about AI, and what we can do.
Concern 1. Adverse Environmental Impacts: Data centers consume important natural resources while being built and while operating (AI training and inferencing). Mining for rare earth materials is often exploitative. More efficient AI algorithms and thoughtful use of genAI tools can reduce the impact.
Concern 2. Unethical Data Sourcing: AI models consume data. Most current AI tools are built on data that was obtained unethically. Look for emerging tools that get their data ethically, protect people’s privacy, and still succeed in generating high-quality outputs.
Concern 3. Exploitation of Data Workers: AI tools need human labor to make the data useful. Many companies exploit workers through unfair labor practices and poor working conditions that damage people’s mental health. Increased visibility of these practices is helping, although most data tasking companies still fail to observe Fairwork principles.
Concern 4. Harmful Model Biases: We all have biases we may or may not be aware of. Harmful human biases can be worsened in AI by how data is sourced & labeled and how AI models are built. For example, health issues in women or people of color may be misdiagnosed. Well-designed AI tools combined with our awareness of biases can help to counteract them.
Concern 5. Impact on Lives and Livelihoods: AI has great potential to help humans with day-to-day home and work. It can destroy people’s ability to make a living, or harm children or our mental health; deep fakes can scam us or damage social interactions. We need to adapt quickly and protect the use of our data.
What’s Next?
Next week, I’ll share 5 tips for practical, concrete actions we can all take to protect ourselves, our families, and our businesses and make the most of AI tools.
These five ethical concerns and much more are covered in my upcoming book, “Everyday Ethical AI: A Guide For Families & Small Businesses”. The world of AI doesn’t stand still. To learn more about these issues and automatically get fresh weekly articles and news about everyday ethical AI, subscribe here.
This is the last week to claim your free copy of “Five Everyday AI & Data Risks” (a 32-page sample of the book) via sixpeas.net/five-ai-risks - the giveaway ends on August 25!
Other articles in this She Leads AI series:
