Lila Ebrahim

Chief operating officer, DeepMind: DeepMind Technologies is a British artificial intelligence company.

As more people and institutions use AI systems in everyday life, interpretability — whether an AI system can explain how it reaches a decision — is critical.”

AI offers new hope for addressing challenges that seem intractable today — from poverty to climate change to disease. As a tool, AI could help us build a future characterised by better health, limitless scientific discovery, shared prosperity and the fulfilment of human potential. At the same time, there’s a growing awareness that innovation can have unintended consequences and valid concern that not enough is being done to anticipate and address them. Yet, for AI optimists, this increasing attention to risks shouldn’t be cause for discouragement or exasperation. Rather, it’s an important catalyst for thinking about the kind of world we want to live in — a question technologists and broader society must answer together.

Despite impressive breakthroughs, AI systems are still relatively nascent. Our ambition should be not only to realise their potential, but to do so safely.

For example, as more people and institutions use AI systems in everyday life, interpretability — whether an AI system can explain how it reaches a decision — is critical.

A recent research collaboration between DeepMind and London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital demonstrated a system that not only recommended the correct referral decision for more than 50 eye diseases with 94 per cent accuracy but also, crucially, presented a visual map that showed doctors how its conclusions were reached.

This is just an early example of progress. Much more must be done, including deeper collaborations between scientists, ethicists, sociologists and others. Optimism should never give way to complacency.

It’s precisely because AI technology has been the subject of so many hopes and fears, that we have an unprecedented chance to shape it for the common good.