As artificial intelligence seeps more into people’s lives, making it ethical as well as functional is one research team’s goal. The group of academics, who hail from different institutions under the banner of the Responsible AI Collaborative, have been indexing stories of AI’s harmful outcomes since 2018. Back then, team leader and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center Sean McGregor says, “we were peaking in terms of AI optimism without a balancing recognition of tradeoffs.” The researchers’ creation, the AI Incident Database (AIID), would help AI practitioners identify and address the technology’s weak points.
McGregor and his team compiled the first data points solely based on news stories. In 2020, they made the AI Incident Database public, and today anyone can submit an entry for consideration. Most incidents are anchored by a story in the press about, say, students creating deepfake pornography of classmates, or a wrongful arrest based on erroneous facial recognition. As a result, the database is not an exhaustive archive of all AI’s problems, but rather a compilation of its newsworthy issues. It captures emerging risks and especially significant issues in AI adoption.
Identifying problems, of course, is only the first step in solving them. But running the database has given the team unique insight into possible fixes. Humans should remain in the loop somewhere, McGregor says, rather than letting AI loose without oversight. Better guardrails and more careful training datasets can also help. Ultimately, the team hopes the AI Incident Database will help establish a culture of safety in the field, so that past errors won’t be repeated.
Katie Peek
Katie Peek is a science journalist and data visualization designer based in Baltimore. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, where she ... Read More
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