By Xie Fang
At a press briefing held in Beijing on Monday, the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF) and the U.S. tech giant Microsoft released their joint report titled Foundation for the Future - Artificial Intelligence's Role in Society and Ethics.
The report focuses not only on the application prospect of artificial intelligence (AI) but also on the potential challenges this emerging technology may pose to human society.
During the discussion session of the press briefing, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, and Xue Lan, dean of the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University, shared their thoughts on the issues concerning the development of AI.
As opposed to several famous scientists and entrepreneurs including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk who feared that the development of AI could bring disastrous consequences to human beings, Smith was optimistic about what AI could bring to mankind. In his opinion, it's unnecessary for people to worry that computers with self-consciousness can one day become more powerful than the human race.
Meanwhile, Smith also acknowledged that the development of AI could have an impact on people's jobs. "Some jobs will go away," he said. "But the good news is that new jobs will be created."
He emphasized that how people could be equipped with new skills that were required for those new jobs is one of the major challenges for countries around the world. "People are going to need to learn new things throughout their careers," said Smith.
Beyond that, Smith thought that people should also pay attention to the ethical issues that may arise with AI. He noted that the fundamental purpose of AI was to empower computers with the capabilities of human brains. "As we give computers these kinds of capabilities, we should also be concerned about what kind of ethical values we give to computers," said Smith.
Xue Lan also agreed that like many other technologies, the rapid development of AI would bring about uncertainties for human society. He believed that it was essential to establish an adaptive governance mechanism which would eliminate the potential threat posed by AI to human beings. "We should warmly shake hands with AI but cautiously embrace it," said Xue.
In fact, to make sure that the development of AI is in the right direction, Microsoft has proposed six basic ethical principles including fairness, inclusiveness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, and transparency, as well as accountability. "In the process of making computers more powerful, we have to ensure that this is guided by a strong sense of ethics," said Smith.
Xue also suggested that to adequately address the privacy concern raised by the application of AI, it was important to have an information governance mechanism in place which could strike a better balance between the use of information and privacy protection.
When it comes to the application prospects of AI, Smith believed that AI would become a driving force which propels the development of every industry in the future. He took healthcare as an example, saying that AI would play a very significant role in helping people cure cancer. "It is entirely possible that cancer would become curable in the next 10 to 15 years," said Smith.
"Every industry will in part become an AI-driven industry in the future," He concluded.
