GCV's AI Q4 2020 supplement editorial by James Mawson, editor in chief, Global Corporate Venturing
Callum Cyrus’s main article of GCV’s AI Q4 2020 supplement points people to French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus’ famous aside: “A man without ethics is a wild beast let loose upon this world.”
What might Camus say about artificial intelligence (AI) without ethics?
The creators of AI bear responsibility for the outcomes from the algorithms, of course. That is, presumably until such time that an artificial general intelligence with agency can develop its own thoughts and leverage the internet of things to control outcomes in the physical as well as digital world.
But if people make decisions based on subjective meaning rather than pure rationality, as Camus argued, then looking into the entrepreneurs and researchers’ hopes and fears and how politicians and societies govern them would seem important.
The hardest question to ask is always “why?”
Ideas, however, are not finite goods to be hoarded and used up but are spread, replicated and iterated on.
Disruption comes from good ideas, incrementally built on in a context and environment that supports it.
There is no shortage of people developing AI and the geopolitical rivalry particularly between the US and China means there is no shortage of money or desire to lead.
If you sit above the API you control the internet economy. If you sit above the AI how much more power will you have?
Innovation capital has generally shied away from the ethical questions in what gets funded as long as the promise of capital returns seems substantial enough.
True, better investors already look at the ethics, aptitudes and attitudes of the founders but the moral qualities tend to be mostly targeting whether they might steal money or perform shoddy work.
As the venture capital industry finally scales up and professionalises, leaving behind its cottage industry roots of VC firms run by lifestyle-motivated managers, then the ethics will increasingly take centre stage.
