Page 32 - WAD Beyond Global May 2021

Applications
Many achievements using AI techniques surpass human Today, AI applications affect almost all fields of activity –
capabilities – in 1997, a computer programme defeated the particularly in the industry, banking, insurance, health and
reigning world chess champion, and more recently, in 2016, defence sectors. Several routine tasks are now automated,
other computer programmes have beaten the world’s best transforming many trades and eventually eliminating some.
Go [an ancient Chinese board game] players and some top
poker players. Computers are proving, or helping to prove, What are the ethical risks?
mathematical theorems; knowledge is being automatically With AI, most dimensions of intelligence – except perhaps humour
FEATURE techniques. faculties in most fields, raising fears of ethical risks. These risks
– are subject to rational analysis and reconstruction, using
constructed from huge masses of data, in terabytes (1012
computers. Moreover, machines are exceeding our cognitive
bytes), or even petabytes (1015 bytes), using machine learning
fall into three categories – the scarcity of work, because it can be
carried out by machines instead of humans; the consequences
As a result, machines can recognize speech and transcribe it –
for the autonomy of the individual, particularly in terms of
just like typists did in the past. Computers can accurately identify
faces or fingerprints from among tens of millions, or understand
would be replaced by more “intelligent” machines. However, if
texts written in natural languages. Using machine learning freedom and security; and the overtaking of humanity, which
techniques, cars drive themselves; machines are better than we examine the reality, we see that work (done by humans) is
dermatologists at diagnosing melanomas using photographs of not disappearing – quite the contrary – but it is changing and
skin moles taken with mobile phone cameras; robots are fighting calling for new skills. Similarly, an individual’s autonomy and
wars instead of humans (see p. 25-28); and factory production freedom are not inevitably undermined by the development of
lines are becoming increasingly automated. AI – so long as we remain vigilant in the face of technological
intrusions into our private lives.
Scientists are also using AI techniques to determine the function
of certain biological macromolecules, especially proteins Finally, contrary to what some people claim, machines pose
and genomes, from the sequences of their constituents – no existential threat to humanity. Their autonomy is purely
amino acids for proteins, bases for genomes. More generally, technological, in that it corresponds only to material chains
all the sciences are undergoing a major epistemological of causality that go from the taking of information to
rupture with in silico experiments – named so because they decision-making. On the other hand, machines have no moral
are carried out by computers from massive quantities of data, autonomy, because even if they do confuse and mislead us in
using powerful processors whose cores are made of silicon. In the process of making decisions, they do not have a will of their
this way, they differ from in vivo experiments, performed on own and remain subjugated to the objectives that we have
living matter, and above all, from in vitro experiments, carried assigned to them.
out in glass test-tubes.

Simulation of electrical activity
in a microcircuit of virtual
neurons of a rat (2015), by the
Blue Brain Project (BBP) team,
part of Europe’s Human Brain
Project (HBP). According to
scientists, it is a step towards
simulating the functioning of
the human brain.

This article appeared in the Writer:
July-September 2018 Issue of the French computer scientist Jean-Gabriel Ganascia is a professor at Sorbonne
UNESCO Courier which while it was University, Paris. He is also a researcher at LIP6, the computer science laboratory
published in 2018, the question of at the Sorbonne, a fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence,
AI Ethics is still of concern. AI is very a member of the Institut Universitaire de France and chairman of the ethics
much a reality today.
committee of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris. His
current research interests include machine learning, symbolic data fusion,
computational ethics, computer ethics and digital humanities
30 W.A.D Beyond Global