Currently, many organizations are adopting artificial intelligence (AI), and want their organizations to become more AI-driven. Most of them are already taking steps towards increasing their AI maturity. However, applying AI technology requires more than technological expertise.
By now, companies and public institutions that have developed their AI maturity to substantial levels will mostly harness an abundance of technical experience. But at the same time, their technical workforce often lacks the required domain knowledge and experience to understand how the business and other stakeholders could either benefit from or risk being harmed by AI-driven innovation. In order to apply AI technologies in an effective and responsible manner, organizations must develop a solid understanding of the intended and established (ethical, legal, societal, and environmental) impact of the solutions they are implementing within their organization as well as within their broader field of work. And so the people working in technical departments must develop knowledge and skills needed to understand and mitigate the particular risks of applied AI within their company’s specific sector (e.g. unfairness and unequal treatment, opaqueness / black boxes, unreproducible results, etc.).
Ambition
The current working group aims to aid students and professionals within the field of AI to learn more about everything related to the responsible (and sensible) application of AI within a company or organization.
On the one hand, reflection on the broad impact of AI and on its ethical, legal and societal aspects should be an integral part of any Artificial Intelligence or Data Science curriculum or module. As any decision in a design or development process has ethical consequences and is subject to legal boundaries, these aspects should ideally not be taught in separate courses, but rather run throughout the curriculum. As suggested by (Miller, 1988), technical issues are best understood in their social context, and the societal aspects of computing are best understood in the context of the underlying technical realization.
To establish true impact, we aim to bring together educational institutes and the organizations where students end up working after graduation. By involving both the educational institutes and those organizations, we can ensure that the educational programs teach students the skills needed to help innovate the companies and public institutions of tomorrow, and that these organizations are ready to embrace and make good use of the knowledge brought in by the newly graduated.