The AI (Artificial Intelligence) threat to privacy has long been talked about. Now, NITI Aayog too has come out with a discussion paper on 'National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence' in which it says
any discussion on the technology is incomplete without talking about ethical issues involved with AI, privacy, and security. "Any strategy document on promoting AI necessarily needs to be conscious of the probable factors of the AI ecosystem that may undermine ethical conduct, impinge on one’s privacy and undermine the security protocol."
While the issue of ethics would concern the biases that an AI system can propagate, the privacy concerns are largely on collection and inappropriate use of data for personal discrimination. Issue of security arises on the implications and the consequent accountability of any AI system.
The discussion paper notes that most AI solutions suffer from what is commonly known as the 'Black Box Phenomenon', with very little or no understanding of what happens in between and only the input data and results being the known factors.
"However, calls for explaining the decision making process will gain momentum as AI systems are increasingly relied upon for decision making that has significant consequences for a large section of population", the discussion paper says.
The paper has also talked about Explainable AI (XAI), an evolving area of research that will create machine learning techniques that enable human users to understand, appropriately trust, and effectively manage the emerging generation of artificially intelligent partners. Essentially, the machine learning algorithms of tomorrow should have the built in capability to explain their logic, enumerate their strengths and weaknesses, and specify an understanding of their future.
And since AI depends hugely on data, there are concerns on data collection without proper consent that has been pointed out in the report. Apart from work being done by Srikrishna Committee on privacy, the paper has suggested that some of other aspects that can be looked at—establishing sectoral regulatory frameworks, and benchmarking our data privacy law with international standards among others.
On the security aspect, it says India can take a leaf out of UK’s playbook, where GBP 9 million is being invested to establish a new Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, aimed at enabling and ensuring ethical, safe and innovative uses of data, including AI.