At MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital, a conference organized the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google announced an external advisory board to provide guidance and expertise to the tech giants in developing Artificial Intelligence(AI) technologies ethically and responsibly. The group was announced by Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, and it includes experts from various fields, including mathematics, computer science, engineering, philosophy, public policy, psychology, and even foreign policy.
“We’ve established an Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC),” wrote Kent Walker SVP of global affairs at Google in a blog post on Tuesday. “This group will consider some of Google’s most complex challenges that arise under our AI Principles, like facial recognition and fairness in machine learning, providing diverse perspectives to inform our work.”
The advisory members list goes as follows:
- Alessandro Acquisti, a leading behavioural economist and privacy researcher,a Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University.
- Bubacarr Bah, an expert in applied and computational mathematics, a Senior Researcher, designated the German Research Chair of Mathematics with specialisation in Data Science, at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) South Africa and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Stellenbosch University.
- De Kai, a researcher in natural language processing, music technology and machine learning, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Distinguished Research Scholar at Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute.
- Dyan Gibbens, an expert in industrial engineering and unmanned systems, CEO of Trumbull, a Forbes Top 25 veteran-founded startup focused on automation, data and environmental resilience in energy and defence.
- Joanna Bryson, an expert in psychology and AI, and a longtime leader in AI ethics, an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath. She has consulted for a number of companies on AI, notably at LEGO researching child-oriented programming techniques for the product that became LEGO Mindstorms.
- Kay Coles James, a public policy expert with extensive experience working at the local, state and federal levels of government. She’s currently President of The Heritage Foundation, focusing on free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom and national defence.
- Luciano Floridi, a leading philosopher and expert in digital ethics. He’s Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Digital Ethics Lab of the Oxford Internet Institute, Professorial Fellow of Exeter College and Turing Fellow and Chair of the Data Ethics Group of the Alan Turing Institute.
- William Joseph Burns, a foreign policy expert and diplomat. He previously served as U.S. deputy secretary of state , and retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a 33-year diplomatic career. He’s currently President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States.
But it’s worth noting that this group is different from the AI ethics board that has been kept so secret since Google acquired DeepMind.
The Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC) will meet for the first time in April. In a blog post, Google’s head of global affairs, Kent Walker, said there would be three further meetings in 2019.