AI Ethics: The Future is Uncertain

Mohammad-R. Akbarzadeh-T.

Abstract:

Rising as the latest stage of the industrial revolution, artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to make a profound contribution to humanity's future and the world. AI systems operate on an unprecedented scale, as closely integrated and intertwined entities with humans. Given the authority to make autonomous decisions, AI promises to complement human sensory limitations and slow response. However, this close interaction may also lead to lasting change in human behavior. Hence, ethics in all its various forms at the personal and social scales, and their legal ramifications, become critical matters. What complicates this is that much of what is happening in the AI world is unprecedented and driven largely by capital interests. We are, for the most part, oblivious to how AI systems will impact human lives in the long run and on a grander scale. How will it serve humanity’s long-desired pursuit of ‘happiness’? The question is fundamental and carries no trivial answer, as AI has deep and multifaceted social and psychological implications, much of which is yet to be discovered. But the future won’t wait for the right solution. In this talk, I hope to address these concerns from an AI design perspective and offer a path towards a solution grounded in the importance of uncertainty-aware systems.

Mohammad-Reza Akbarzadeh-T. is a professor and founding member of the Center of Excellence on Soft Computing and Intelligent Information Processing (SCIIP) in the departments of electrical engineering and computer engineering at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. He received his PhD in Evolutionary Optimization and Fuzzy Control of Complex Systems from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in 1998. From 1996 to 2003, he was also affiliated with the NASA Center for Autonomous Control Engineering at UNM. In 2006 and 2017, he was also a visiting scholar at the Berkeley Initiative on Soft Computing (BISC) at UC Berkeley. In 2007, he also served as a consulting faculty member in the Department of Aerospace and Aeronautical Engineering at Purdue University.

Prof. Akbarzadeh is the founding president of the Intelligent Systems Scientific Society of Iran and the founding councilor representing the Iranian Coalition on Soft Computing in IFSA. His research interests are in bio-inspired computing/optimization, fuzzy logic and control, soft computing, multi-agent systems, complex systems, robotics, cognitive sciences, and medical informatics. He has published over 650 peer-reviewed articles in these and related research fields.