Ethical Considerations in AI and IoT Development
This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Melissa Orozco
AI and IoT development are among the biggest technological disruptors in the last ten years. They have completely changed how we interact with technology. If someone told you a few years ago that technology would become so sophisticated that it would start doing tasks that only humans were capable of, you probably wouldn’t believe them.
In hindsight, though, we should have seen it coming because there were numerous predictions on how AI and IoT devices would change the world. Nonetheless, AI and IoT technologies are just getting started—soon enough, they’ll become part of our everyday lives. While they’ve had some incredibly positive effects so far, we can’t ignore the ethical considerations surrounding the use of these technologies.
What are Ethical Considerations?
Before we get into some of these considerations, let’s first define the phrase ethical considerations. Ethical considerations in relation to AI and IoT development refer to the potential risks that the development and use of these technologies pose to humans and the society as a whole.
Some of the ethical considerations in AI and IoT development that have come up include:
Impact on the Workforce
This is probably the most talked-about ethical concern surrounding the use of AI. While it started out by carrying out repetitive and time-consuming tasks, it has fast evolved and now poses a threat to human workers losing their jobs.
In 2023, a Goldman Sachs study conducted in the US and European labor markets found that generative AI threatens to affect over 30 million jobs if it lives up to its developers’ expectations. Among those expected to be most affected by this technology include data analysts, content writers, coders, programmers, paralegals, research analysts, traders, graphic designers, etc.
Privacy and Data Protection
AI and IoT developers use massive data sets to train these systems, sometimes requiring the need to use personal and private information for them to work effectively. This has led to concerns regarding how developers collect, use, and store this data, especially in a world where data security is of the utmost importance.
This concern further highlights the need for regulatory compliance of these systems in regard to data handling and protection. For instance, there isn’t much transparency about how AI and IoT developers handle and store personal data in line with existing data laws such as the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Fairness and Non-discrimination
Another ethical consideration in AI and IoT development is the risk of bias and discrimination. If data used to train these systems contains any societal biases, AI algorithms may pick up these biases, leading to inaccurate decisions. This can be extremely harmful in systems that rely on AI to make decisions, such as lending, hiring, and even social justice.
For instance, if an AI system used to make court judgment decisions learns from data sets that contain biases on a particular race, it could reinforce these disparities and cause social injustices.
Transparency and Explainability
All decisions require explanations and transparency of how they were arrived at. However, this may not be the case, especially for complex AI algorithms. This has led to a lack of trust in some of these systems if humans can’t understand how they made these decisions. Developers must, therefore, build AI and IoT systems that provide clear explanations of their outputs and reasoning processes.
Human Control and Autonomy
While AI systems can perform some tasks humans can perform, they shouldn’t completely replace humans. At the end of the day, AI systems lack the judgment and emotional skills that some situations may require to make the best decisions. In such scenarios, human oversight and control are crucial. Therefore, it’s imperative that AI developers design these systems to augment human capabilities instead of replacing them.
Conclusion
The ethical considerations highlighted in this article highlight the need for responsible AI and IoT development. This is because while AI may offer many benefits in making processes efficient, it also poses major risks to humanity and society.
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