The Ethical Dilemmas of the New World of Machine Learning and AI

By: Aseel Alsahsah

Portraits not drawn by humans? Predicting what TV Show or song you'll like? Self-driving cars that move you around? Diagnosing a disease without human intervention! Yes, these things are attainable and can be done effortlessly now with the power of AI and machine learning technologies.

But after being fascinated by the sheer ability of machines to do things at a speed and accuracy that surpasses that of humans, have you thought about the ethical issues that plague AI usage?

Portraits created by AI apps are going viral, and people are delighted and amazed with the results. It works by uploading a bunch of your photos; you wait a few seconds until the app presents you with multiple avatars that look like you in different artistic ways. But are artists satisfied or consenting to that?

The art these systems use to produce avatars with different styles and framings belongs to real artists, which leads to the next big question of this works' ethics.

Some AI apps require you to pay to use these features, but are artists' permission taken into account to use their art to earn money? How can you give credit to these artists? That may raise a real ethical problem.

Also, companies and government agencies have volumes of customer data at their fingertips, and these amounts are increasing. Unfortunately, some organizations do not have clear rules about the ethical protection of customer data or how to prevent breaches.

Advertising companies, in particular, deal with a massive amount of data about the user. They track their information and movements to provide the best advertising experience. But some people may consider this invasion of their privacy, and others almost think they are being watched!

Additionally, many AI systems collect and analyze large amounts of data, such as using a dataset of public photos or videos of human faces. Thus, this can open doors for misuse or exploitation if the system is not trained to use these images for acceptable reasons, which is consequential for individuals.

With AI tools, public videos of people, and their audio recordings, the chance of generating misleading video footage carrying fake news will boost, which has been tried and applied before.

Things like that and many more may happen when technology falls into the hands of a non-qualified person to bear its ethical responsibility. You'd be forgiven if you thought there might be scary times ahead!