F O C U S
Those working at the front-end of technology development realise that what they’re doing is cutting-edge and could change the world. And they’re asking for a little help in trying to maximise the chance that it changes the world for the better and not the worse. Prof Simon Chesterman, on the tech industry’s approach to ethics
2 0 . THE ALUM NUS
people are beginning to think that human intelligence can be replaced with AI to make decisions, according to Professor David De Cremer, Director of the Centre on AI Technology for Humankind (AiTH) at the National University of Singapore Business School. If left unchecked, these algorithms could be used to fire staff, a phenomenon known as robo-firings. But as Prof De Cremer stresses, machine intelligence has no intuition and consciousness. “This approach means that people have to work in very consistent ways. But sometimes, as a human, you have a bad day or a good day,” he points out. Businesses should be aware of such nuances before rushing to adopt technologies. Set up in 2020, the AiTH aims to champion such views in the business community. Through such efforts, it hopes to build a humancentred approach to AI (HCAI) in society. HCAI designs AI systems with the understanding that intelligent technologies are fully embedded in society. Such systems can therefore be expected to act in line with the
norms and values of a humane society, including fairness, justice, ethics, responsibility and trustworthiness. HCAI also preserves human agency and a sense of responsibility by designing AI systems that give users a high level of understanding of, and control over, their specific and unique processes and outputs.
PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES Ethics is an especially dicey issue in the world of computing and tech. Professor Jungpil Hahn, Vice Dean, Communications, at the NUS School of Computing, highlighted this in a 2021 lecture, where he observed that for many new technologies, there was no good way to balance the harms against the benefits since many of the harms are unknown, unquantifiable or unpredictable. There is also a lack of consensus about the correct ethical approaches to technology. So it is important that Singapore and her institutions — including NUS and AI Singapore — remain at the forefront of governance debates, adds Prof Chesterman, who is also