This week on The Digital Life, we explore the difficulties of establishing an AI code of ethics, inspired by an article from MIT Technology Review, “Establishing an AI code of ethics will be harder than people think”.

There’s already ample evidence that artificial intelligence can exacerbate existing system bias if left unchecked. And, a set of design ethics guiding AI development may be far in the future, as the difficulty of defining an applicable rule set, and the subjective nature of ethics itself, makes the task extremely difficult. However, such arguments over AI ethics often emphasize top-down efforts rather than bottom-up — for instance, auditing AI decision-making from the initial data curation stage and throughout the process. In this view, AI design and development is not a purely technical practice, but instead incorporates cultural aspects, similar to teaching children right and wrong. Join us as we discuss.

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Establishing an AI code of ethics will be harder than people think

On The Digital Life this week our special guest is Dr. Carie Little Hersh, an American cultural anthropologist, teaching professor in Anthropology at Northeastern University, and producer and host of podcast Anthropologist on the Street. We chat about human creativity and technology through time, from an anthropological perspective.

Which came first: humans or technology? And what is the relationship between homo sapiens and the species who came before us, or those such as the neanderthals with whom we competed? We consider the anthropological relationship between technology and creativity, as well as patterns in technological progression through time. Join us as we discuss.

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RelevANTH
Anthropologist on the Street

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the intersection of artificial intelligence and science with special guest is Dany DeGrave, founder of Unconventional Innovation. AI and science are coming together in new and significant ways, including the use of cognitive and other innovative technologies in R&D — like NLP, machine learning, and advanced analytics. As bio-science companies rush to invest in AI, the implementation of scientific research, drug trials, and even personalized medicine is undergoing significant change. But with the potential to make erroneous decisions, and even be used for malicious purposes, it may be a long time before we fully trust AI to be used in such development.

This week on The Digital Life, we speak with special guest, Jason Grant, CEO of Integral, about human development models and the role of human development in creativity.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat with Ben Nelson, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Minerva, a groundbreaking university program, and an editor of the book “Building the Intentional University”.

We discuss some of the key problems with higher education, how Minerva is rethinking the university system to support how people actually learn, and the ways in which the tech-enabled learning experience for Minerva students and professors is vastly different from those of a more traditional college or university.

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Minerva Schools