Google Launches Global Advisory Council to Guide AI Usage

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The eight-member panel will consider “complex challenges” related to AI, like facial recognition. They will meet four times in 2019 starting next month.

Google has launched a global advisory council to offer guidance on ethical issues relating to artificial intelligence (AI), automation and related technologies.

The eight-member Advanced Technology External Advisory Council was announced at a conference organised at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in San Francisco.

They will provide recommendations on how to use technologies such as facial recognition.

“Last June we announced Google’s AI Principles, an ethical charter to guide the responsible development and use of AI in our research and products. To complement the internal governance structure and processes that help us implement the principles, we’ve established an Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC),” wrote Google’s head of global affairs, Kent Walker, in a blog post.

“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,” he added.

The council will meet four times in 2019 starting next month and publish a report at the end of the year.

The members include:

  1. Bubacarr Bah, an expert in applied and computational mathematics
  2. William Joseph Burns, former US deputy secretary of state
  3. Joanna Bryson, an associate professor in computing at the University of Bath, UK
  4. Dyan Gibbens, chief executive of Houston-based drone startup Trumbull
  5. Alessandro Acquisti, a professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University
  6. De Kai, a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
  7. Kay Coles James, President of The Heritage Foundation
  8. Luciano Floridi, who is a professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford.