Your smart phone can feel like a lifeline, helping you navigate a new town or delivering an urgent message to a friend. Many people have a funny or embarrassing anecdote about an autocorrected text message or a roundabout route to a destination. But these artificial intelligence (AI) flaws exist on a spectrum, from minor inconveniences to unfair treatment or even risk to human life.
The people who create and use these AI technologies are also imperfect; we have our own biases, whether we are aware of them or not. Unconscious bias can influence our decisions and lead to unintended consequences; overt prejudice can result in our unethical and harmful exploitation of AI technologies.
This level of potential AI power has not gone unnoticed by the U.S. and nations around the world. In 2019, members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development adopted “OECD Principles on Artificial Intelligence” in order to “promote AI that is innovative and trustworthy and that respects human rights and democratic values,” according to the OECD website.