Irvine, CA, October 23, 2018 – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a key technology, disrupting the way business and society operates. Many predictions have been made about how the technology will transform every aspect of our daily lives; most ingrained in the notion of fear.
Hollywood tropes aside, AI has been around since the early 20th century. It has evolved to enhance business capacity within different industries. The tech industry has been at the forefront of adopting this technology in the wake of the AI revolution.
In a recent podcast, team members from Project Insight, project management software company based in Irvine, sat down with strategic consultant and blogger, Adrien Book, to discuss how AI will impact business, the economy and humanity. Book gave 30 minutes of thought-provoking conversation on Episode 4 of Project Insight’s podcast, Not Your CEO’s Insights.
He alluded to how major tech companies, like Amazon, are utilizing AI to automate business tasks. In the case of Amazon, the tech giant used an AI-powered system to automate the recruitment process. After “training” their system with a decade’s worth of resume data, the AI developed an algorithmic bias towards men. As leveraging artificial intelligence capabilities becomes commonplace, it’s important to address what should be asked of tech companies that develop and utilize AI.
He concluded that we should be asking three basic things of tech companies using the software:
1. Honesty – Companies using AI chatbots should give consumers a disclaimer that a machine is assisting them.
2. Transparency – When an error occurs with an AI, companies have developed or are utilizing it should be proactive in letting affected consumers know and fixing the situation.
3. Responsibility – Who is responsible for the AI if someone gets hurt? Think of self-driving cars that are coming becoming mainstream. According to Book, the developers of the software should be held accountable.
Book reminds us that artificial intelligence is not a technology that we need to learn to co-exist with but rather simply “exist” with. Like the washing machine or any other tool that was introduced to society, we were able to build upon our innovation capabilities and improve our quality of life because of it.