{"id":42446,"date":"2021-09-20T09:37:24","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T09:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=ffcfc0915e1d7b0dff426d694dd2782e"},"modified":"2021-09-20T09:37:24","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T09:37:24","slug":"un-high-commissioner-calls-for-ban-on-harmful-ai-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/un-high-commissioner-calls-for-ban-on-harmful-ai-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"UN high commissioner calls for ban on harmful AI tools"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Praharsha Anand <\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
20 Sep, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The UN high commissioner for human rights has called for a moratorium on\u00a0AI systems<\/a>\u00a0that threaten human rights until governments can set up safeguards.<\/p>\n

AI applications that violate human rights law should be banned, said High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, in a statement issued on Thursday.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nHer comments\u00a0coincide with the release of a UN\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0warning of existing human rights abuses involving\u00a0AI systems across various sectors, including\u00a0law enforcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The report warned of potential abuses through the irresponsible use of AI, including the erroneous assumptions by AI algorithms that could miscategorize people as terrorists or fraudsters, for example.<\/p>\n

The report\u00a0also voiced concerns about the inability for most AI models to explain their results,\u00a0which it called the ‘black box problem’<\/a>. Machine learning algorithms are not based on rules,\u00a0instead using matrices of numbers<\/a>, or ‘weights’, between large numbers of digital neurons.<\/p>\n

The UN’s document also raised privacy concerns, arguing that AI tools don’t need to train themselves on personal data to infer results about a person’s behaviour.<\/p>\n

“AI tools can make far-reaching inferences about individuals, including about their mental and physical condition, and can enable the identification of groups, such as people with particular political or personal leanings,” it warned.<\/p>\n

The report suggested several measures to mitigate adverse effects on human rights. These include legislation and regulation, collaboration between the public and private sector, and\u00a0due diligence when implementing AI systems<\/a>. It also called for transparency about the nature of systems used, who is using them, and what for, along with what data they are using.<\/p>\n

Transparency is something that the Federal Trade Commission has also\u00a0advocated<\/a>, but the UN has now gone further, advising governments to create registers containing this information.<\/p>\n

\u201cArtificial intelligence can be a force for good, helping societies overcome some of the great challenges of our times,” said Bachelet.\u00a0“But AI technologies can have negative, even catastrophic, effects if they are used without sufficient regard to how they affect people\u2019s human rights.”<\/p>\n

The UN has been outspoken about the use of technology in the past,\u00a0calling<\/a>\u00a0in August for a moratorium on the\u00a0sale of surveillance technology<\/a>\u00a0and pointing out the use of spyware tools to tap smartphones. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Praharsha Anand <\/p>\n

20 Sep, 2021 <\/p>\n

The UN high commissioner for human rights has called for a moratorium on\u00a0AI systems\u00a0that threaten human rights until governments can set up safeguards.
\nAI applications that violate human rig…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42447,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42446\/revisions\/42447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}