Different shareholders’ groups such as the National Legal & Policy Center (NLPC), Shareholders Association for Research and Education (SHARE), Inspire Investing raise issues about Google’s potential AI risks. Mostly the concerns are about the privacy rights, responsible investing and censor of speech. The wider shareholders of Google vote down these proposals. NLPC wants Google to clarity whether it is stealing people’s data to train its AI systems. SHARE wants a human rights impact study of AI-driven advertising. Google counters by saying that it regularly publishes AI Responsibility reports. These reports spell out their policies, practices and processes while developing advanced AI systems.
It is a fact that the reports are company generated and have not been scrutinized by any independent regulators or researchers.
Silicon Valley is known for its whitewashing by releasing glossy reports. Facebook has released a report on hateful conduct. Uber Technologies have released a report on safety statistics. These are not audited by any third party. There are no laws on content moderation, algorithm design and model design. The whole thing is pretty opaque.
A key ingredient to AI models is their traning data. It is kept secret by AI companies including OpenAI. If independent researchers get access to such data, they can better scrutinize for security flaws, bias or copyright violations. It is kept under wraps by the corporates under the pretext of trade secrets.
Google’s investors can bring about a real change by pushing for an external oversight prior to deployment of AI systems. Facebook took the initiative in this direction by hiring E&Y to audit its transparency reports. However, it could not go much further.
Google’s activists’ shareholders lack the clout to influence the financial setting at AGM. If their concerns are pushed further till they reach the regulatory ears, political channels such as law makers, something on the lines of FDA can be set up for AI to compel companies to meet certain standards before releasing their technology to the public. Till then, the status quo prevails.
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