Ethical considerations will go into Artificial Intelligence (AI)’s design and employment because it enables autonomy, decision making and system execution at incredibly fast speeds, a U.S. DoD official said.
“These ethical principles build on the department's long history of ethical adoption of new technologies and rules of engagement and warfare,” Alka Patel, head of artificial intelligence ethics policy at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said today at the Defense One Genius Machines 2021 virtual summit.
The Defense Innovation Board spent months developing the principles and consulted with leading AI and technical experts, as well as current and former DoD leaders and the American public, she said.
According to a Pentagon statement, those principles state:
Now that the principles have been established, the department is going about operationalizing them to AI applications across the services, she said, adding that it's a tall but necessary order. Training and education of ethical AI practices across the department also goes hand-in-hand with that.
Another important part of AI ethics is sharing the conversation with allies and partners, so that everyone is on the same page when it comes to how ethics comes to play in interoperability, she said.
Sharing the conversation with corporations that are helping the department in its AI efforts is also important, Patel said. Companies and their employees need assurance that what they are helping to build will be used in an ethically responsible manner and, in turn, that they need to build it to ethical standards.