Page 93 - The Ethics of ASEAN

Ethical Challenges of our Digital World

The example Dr Ran uses of an unavoidable ethical
consideration is the concept of AI Singularity: this refers to
the point at which artificial intelligence is superior to that of
humans at the scale of society and becomes uncontrollable by
humans. According to Dr Ran, to avoid technological singularity,
human developers of AI play an integral part in making ethical
decisions with human centricity at the core of innovations.
Instead of complete human substitution, AI and technology
become a component of the human society, augmenting human
creativity, understanding and experience.
To ensure such a future, education is essential. Dr Ran
describes the model in South Korean higher education which is Figure 4: Dr Ran Baik,
pioneering technology-enhanced educational methodologies. Professor, Department of
SMART education helps build the essential skills of 21st century Digital Engineering, Honam
University, South Korea,
life using problem-solving and communication among the and Computer of AI-Big
students. This pioneering project also has enabled researchers Data Institute
and educators to identify key challenges for education,
including the need to reinforce ethics such as information
copyright and abuse of human communication behaviour.
Dr Ran outlined the concept of AI being “educated” to
follow desired ethical principles, resulting in better machine
learning processes and outcomes. This rejoins the concept
of Trustworthy AI described by Kelly Forbes. Apart from
promoting ethics for human technology developers and users,
AI ethics combats problems such as AI bias.

Erica Lesmana: social media ethics and issues
for ASEAN youth

Erica describes the landscape of social media usage by ASEAN
youth, one of the world’s highest when measured as time
spent online daily. She illustrates the risks using a recent case
in Indonesia where the personal data of at least 279 million
Indonesians was allegedly leaked and sold on the hacker
platform called the Raid Forums site. 7
An ethical issue that does great damage to youth is
cyberbullying, an area where Erica has been an active volunteer.

According to the United Nations International
Children’s Emergency Funds (UNICEF), Figure 5: Erica Lesmana,
youth representative from
cyberbullying is defined as bullying with the Faculty of Economics
the use of digital technologies. It can take and Business/Accounting,
Universitas Gadjah Mada,
Indonesia
7 Indonesian government blocks hacking forum after data leak (2021) https://
therecord.media/indonesian-government-blocks-hacking-forum-after-
data-leak/ Retrieved January 30, 2023

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