University of Guelph launches AI ethics centre

The University of Guelph is launching a new hub for artificial intelligence to grapple with ethical questions amidst growing concern around issues of privacy, bias and human-machine interaction.

Zeroing in on the moral side of everything from medical imaging to automated credit card approvals, the Centre for Advancing Responsible and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (CARE-AI) aims to bring together experts to study and teach humanist approaches to AI.

Graham Taylor, a machine learning expert named as the centre’s academic director, says AI carries the seeds of both harm and progress, depending on how it’s nourished.

“There has to be, with any AI, essentially a tradeoff between what you can do with the technology and how much you’re willing to violate people’s privacy in order to achieve those technological objectives,” Taylor said in an interview.

“We’re still fully in control of these systems, so it’s the right time to drive toward human values... potentially before it’s too late, because there are things that could go wrong.”

Protecting people’s right to privacy and weeding out bias in big data will be one of his key concerns, as ethical issues continue to draw attention everywhere from Silicon Valley to Toronto’s waterfront.

There, Google-affiliated tech company Sidewalk Labs’ proposed use of sensors to measure residents’ movements in a planned neighbourhood near downtown, has sparked debates over facial recognition

Soultions can resolve the tension between privacy and data collection. In one recent lab experiment, Taylor’s team used carbon dioxide detection rather than cameras, to determine how many people occupy a space.