DeepMind forms an AI ethics unit
Google's artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind is forming new unit the DeepMind Ethics & Society (DMES) to analyse all aspects of AI technology, its impact on people and society. "We’re going to be collaborating with all kinds of think tanks and academics. I think it’s exciting to be a company that is putting sensitive issues… on the table for public discussion," said DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman. He added DMES would be more transparent than DeepMind, which will launch a series of other initiatives next year to explore the ethical impacts of AI.
While little is known about the ruminations of DeepMind’s internal ethics and safety board, DMES is intended to be open and transparent. All its research will be published online in full and its six external fellows – who include economist professor Diane Coyle; philosopher and existential risk expert professor Nick Bostrom; international diplomat Christiana Figueres; and economist professor Jeffrey Sachs – have not signed any non-disclosure agreements.

“I can say what I like about anything, anywhere, there’s no constraining agreement,” professor Coyle tells me. She describes her role as a fellow to DMES as conducting academic reviews on research, taking part in workshops and giving feedback. She adds that concerns about DeepMind in-housing crucial AI research are broadly unfounded. “DeepMind is obviously owned by Google now. But you can be too cynical about it. I think they are sincere and genuinely want to achieve some understanding and do some very good research. And I think if a lot more companies did it we’d be in a better place.”

Such cynicism might be founded on DeepMind’s collaboration with the NHS Royal Free Trust to develop an app used to detect acute kidney injury. An investigation into the data-sharing agreement between the firm and the NHS by the Information Commissioner’s Office found that the Royal Free had failed to comply with the data protection act when it handed over details of 1.6 million patients to DeepMind. At the time, a DeepMind spokesperson said the firm “underestimated the complexity of the NHS and of the rules around patient data”. The ICO warned that such work should never be “a choice between privacy or innovation”.

When I raise the issue with Suleyman, he counters that DeepMind created a panel of independent reviewers to scrutinise its work with the NHS, adding the company took “serious measures” to be open and transparent. “There's so much more that we need to do when it comes to interacting with this kind of data in the NHS. And that is really, really challenging,” he says. “It is ambiguous, a lot of the texts are very tough to navigate when it comes to regulation and a lot of it is emerging and trying to catch up with the technology.” If it works as DeepMind hopes, one role for DMES could be to spot similar issues and tackle them in the open based on input from all parties.

“I think having a forum where you can bring a lot of disciplinary views to bear is one of the really attractive things about this” Professor Diane Coyle

The launch of DMES comes little-over a year after the launch of the Partnership on AI, a consortium of technology firms, activist organisations and academic institutions focussed on establishing best practises for developments in artificial intelligence. DeepMind was a founding member, alongside Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and IBM. For Suleyman, it was necessary to establish DMES alongside the Partnership to tackle the size of the challenge the industry faces. “The objective of DMES is to start to do the work ourselves that I don't see happening elsewhere. The more people doing this research the better. We want there to be lots of orthogonal approaches on this work.” One of the challenges for the Partnership, Suleyman continues, is persuading “all the companies and researchers to get on board with the direction of travel”.

As well partnering with organisations such as the Royal Society and Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, DMES will also work closely with the Partnership on AI. Such work will often involve funding interdisciplinary research. While the existence of DeepMind funding will always be made public, the amount of funding may sometimes remain secret. “I think DeepMind should be applauded for taking the initiative to extend its engagement with questions of ethics and social impacts of AI,” says professor Bostrom. “Of course, if there were only one voice speaking on these issues it would be concerning – and maybe equally concerning whether that one voice was a cooperation, a government, or some nutty academic. Fortunately that is not the world we are living in.” He describes DMES as an effort by DeepMind to expose itself to “a larger set of critical economic and ethical perspectives”. DeepMind will also launch “other initiatives” looking into the ethical and societal impacts of AI in 2018, Suleyman says.