The AI community is little by little becoming more inclusive and fairer thanks to several initiatives such as specific workshops and new policies at conferences. Machine learning has been at the forefront of the movement for free and open access to research. Unfortunately, yes. 2, 157–160 (2020). I remain worried about the lack of whistleblower protection. Article A noteworthy initiative in this regard is the Whose Knowledge? AI is thought to diminish human involvement in the creative process. We were overjoyed and humbled by the positive feedback from researchers in many different fields and by the great resonance from social media and other publications. I am all of a sudden a hero for continuing to live my life indoors, spending 16 hours a day on a computer. Furthermore, our team has been working with public and private sector partners in multiple data-driven operational projects such as supporting local teams to counter health misinformation in the Global South or creating epidemiological models to understand the potential impact of public health interventions in refugee camps and settlements. Mach. Taddeo, M. Minds Mach. In the same vein, I hope vulnerable populations — whether elders at risk of respiratory illness or disadvantaged rural communities at risk of natural disasters — gain greater access to intelligent decision support systems in times of a crisis. The ISSN of Nature Machine Intelligence is - . Hundreds of public–private initiatives have been established across the globe since 2017 with the goal of defining common ethical principles and commitments to guide the future development and governance of AI. computational intelligence, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, machine and deep learning. We outlined the emerging field of secure and private AI that employs a collection of innovative techniques to allow machine learning-based processing of sensitive or confidential data such as in medical imaging. Therefore, the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) started a networking project, and we are now excited by the growing possibility to globally collaborate with other denominations in order to increase societal awareness and responsibility on AI and machine ethics. We analysed 84 documents and found that, despite an apparent convergence on certain ethical principles on the surface level, there are substantive divergences on how these principles are interpreted, why they are deemed important, what issue, domain or actors they pertain to, and how they should be implemented. D’Ignazio, C. & Klein, L. F. Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020). For example, in 2001 the Editorial Board of the Machine Learning Journal resigned en masse to form a new zero-cost open access journal, the Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR).. According to Gartner, there will be 2.3 million jobs in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning by 2022. Kaissis, G. A., Makowski, M. R., Rückert, D. & Braren, R. F. Secure, privacy-preserving and federated machine learning in medical imaging. Several prospective studies have already started, such as in AI applied to medical images for diagnosis and prognostications, but these are developed at an unprecedented speed compared to any previous AI algorithm development. We argued that emergencies, such as the pandemic, engender circumstances in which AI technologies may be deployed at extraordinary speed, scale and depth, but at the expense of adequate oversight, foresight or rigorous risk assessment. The ISSN of Nature Machine Intelligence is - . volume 3, pages2–8(2021)Cite this article. As robotic systems become more autonomous, it gets less straightforward to determine liability when humans are harmed. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-0144-y, Automated Categorization of Brain Tumor from MRI Using CNN features and SVM. Mach. ScienceDaily. We received encouraging feedback, and are particularly happy to have heard from several students, who expressed an interest in working on the topics proposed in our article. We spend the day reading papers, discussing them, managing peer review, guiding revisions, commissioning articles, writing Editorials and other articles, editing, preparing articles for production and carrying out a multitude of quality checks. Nature Machine Intelligence will publish and report on the best research in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, including human-robot interaction, machine learning and cognitive computing. We are planning to obtain funding to formally test the ideas laid out in our paper. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles Jamjoom, A. In our Comment, we wanted to provide a framework to think about the big picture of how AI can help against the pandemic. On the one hand, our research efforts were steered towards key applications, such as (ethical) processing of healthcare data and AI- and robot-assisted remote support in hospitals and clinics. These are positive steps, but I worry about the level of buy-in across all levels of organizations developing and using AI. Digital innovation and technological progress increasingly affect our vision of humanity, as key concepts such as embodiment, agency and intelligence are stretched to apply to machines. Tzachor, A., Whittlestone, J., Sundaram, L. & Ó hÉigeartaigh, S. Artificial intelligence in a crisis needs ethics with urgency. A related paper was published this year that analysed in detail 146 papers dedicated to gender bias in NLP2. I remain worried about big tech ignoring and suppressing critical voices and collective action. But it remains to be seen how protection can be granted to AI-artwork itself, and whether this will vary between jurisdictions. Contributions from the Catholic Church to ethical reflections in the digital era. Our hearts and minds go out to all who suffer from or lost loved ones to this pandemic. We hope for a recommitment of government policymakers to the scientific principles of free exchange of ideas, open critique and debate, and respect for facts and expertise. However, the final full pdf version of articles is, at the moment, not free to access. Costa-jussà, M. R. An analysis of gender bias studies in natural language processing. Intell. Once adopted, digital technologies become an interface through which we interact, change, perceive and understand others and our environment. 22 May 2020; Luengo-Oroz, M. et al. However, AI systems can be incredibly backward-looking, in large part because they are trained on historical data that by its nature represents the past. In our article, we discussed this emerging challenge in the context of surgical robotics and introduced the iRobotSurgeon Survey, which aims to explore public opinion towards the issue of liability with robotic surgical systems. and JavaScript. Advances in generative algorithms have enabled neural networks to generate synthetic datasets, from photorealistic videos to human-like text. Our overview of AI ethics guidelines has made clear to me that the devil is in the details. The massive amount of time, effort and other resources that were being poured into AI ethics initiatives made the topic impossible to ignore. As a consequence, the field was producing a large amount of quantitative work with complex maths, but lacking consistency and was far from having a social impact. The survey presents five hypothetical scenarios where the patient comes to harm and the respondent needs to determine who they feel is mostly responsible: the surgeon, the robot manufacturer, the hospital or another party. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-0144-y, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-0144-y, Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing At the heart of the matter, we feel, is the question of whether there is room for journals dedicated to high standards in science communication, transparency and reproducibility, curating, filtering and quality checking, which require full-time, salaried staff. Nat. The ISO4 abbreviation of Nature Machine Intelligence is Nat. We now have a clearer understanding of opportunities and risks; for example, increased knowledge and data sharing can be beneficial in a pandemic but carries a risk of unwarranted surveillance and control. As we highlight in the Comment, religious denominations at large, as full participants in pluralist societies, should be part of an inclusive dialogue. But we believe that the discussion has returned to the same old debates on whether word co-occurrence statistics are sufficient to achieve understanding about the world. In particular, we felt that the time was ripe to interweave faith with science and technology, with the aim to identify a path where we respectfully listen to different voices on the topic of machine ethics. Our ongoing research on the role of homeostasis and feelings in living creatures has shown that the response to feelings motivates creative and adaptive behaviour. & Marcus, H. J. This ‘trust and forget’ dynamic is problematic, because it may lead to the erosion of human control on the impact that digital technologies have on our societies. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. We have landscaped AI and COVID-19 applications, worked on infodemics research roadmaps, and mapped inequalities and privacy risks that may arise from the use of AI applications in the pandemic. It feels as though our (legitimate) concerns around privacy with the technology have been given absolute precedence over equally legitimate public health interests before we’ve had a chance to find the right balance between the two and translate this into the technology’s design and governance. Anna Jobin. Nat. Mittelstadt, B. Nat. Furthermore, public opinion has been converging on higher awareness towards the value of protecting personal data for a long time. Overall, I hope to see a shift in how AI is governed, resulting in the allocation of more decision-making power to those who may or will actually be affected by these systems. We learned that there is often a misconception when it comes to promoting diversity in the workplace; namely, algorithms tend to be accepted as a welcome, unbiased alternative to human decision-makers who are regarded as biased. The journal publishes articles reporting substantive results on a wide range of learning methods applied to a variety of learning problems, including but not limited to: Before we launched, a number of machine learning researchers voiced their disapproval of the journal and called for a boycott because Nature Machine Intelligence is subscription-based. I hope 2021 will bring greater focus on the pressing issues surrounding AI in society, such as dataset bias, data privacy and the carbon footprint associated with the extremely large networks being trained, and a shift away from the distant and nebulous concepts that saturate many discussions, such as technological singularity. In our view this highlights the importance of developing privacy-preserving tools in areas beyond medical imaging. We are looking forward to another year of providing a platform for research, commentaries and reviews in all areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics. Citizens trust institutions to oversee the deployment of AI systems that are safe, reliable, have appropriate levels of transparency, are monitored appropriately, and are accompanied by accountability procedures and redressing measures for any unwanted consequence following the use of AI. My experience is that changing the data with automatic procedures is quite difficult, and it is even more challenging to do this non-automatically, since this implies a societal change. We were also concerned about the possibility that some governments may depart from their liberal tradition and exploit the abnormal circumstances to keep personal data in perpetuity, and to legitimize algorithm-assisted instruments of coercion. Intell. Mach. I was excited to see efforts to apply machine learning techniques to disaster risk reduction. Cybersecurity is another field that’s benefitting from AI. ISSN 2522-5839 (online). The boycott announcement, which called for open access articles that are produced at zero cost for authors, raised the question of what journals like ours can contribute to science publishing in AI. We feel that this is mainly due to the fact that everyone can inherently identify with the requirement for privacy in such a sensitive field as healthcare and medicine. & West, T. The imperative of interpretable machines. My thinking on the topic of ‘AI ethics in crisis conditions’ has extended beyond the pandemic; the insights we gain from the analysis of AI performance in the current emergency are pertinent and transferable to predictable adversities in other domains. Do look us up on nature.com/natmachintell. Aims and scope Machine Learning is an international forum for research on computational approaches to learning. Therefore, we hope that programmers will think more deeply about the social and moral issues at play as they design future AI systems. The links between privacy-preserving deep learning and topics such as regularization or probabilistic inference are providing new insights on old questions and we feel that blockchain technologies are at a point of maturity where they can be employed alongside privacy-preserving systems for a variety of auxiliary tasks such as auditing. For instance, we recommended designing for transparency and explainability, and using adversarial techniques such as ‘red teaming’. “The science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs”. 1, 501–507 (2019). Acknowledging the sociotechnical nature of AI systems requires us, as Pratyusha Kalluri put it succinctly1, to centre less on fairness, or on ‘AI for good’, and more on power distribution and power differentials. The first challenge is that clinical needs are moving as the epidemic progresses. Moreover, I expect that a higher proportion of scientific contributions and social policies will explicitly take into account these topics by deeply questioning our data and algorithms, rethinking hierarchies, challenging power or embracing pluralism4. Nat. I expect social media companies to finally be required to change some of the core assumptions, including how to optimize and trade for people’s attention. We hope that we have gone some way towards answering this question in 2019. Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily. As voiced by several of our contributors to the Feature in this issue, it will be important in 2020 that researchers and communities work together across borders and cultures on a future with AI that benefits all. Nature Machine Intelligence is a transformative (offering optional open access) scientific journal dedicated to covering machine learning and artificial intelligence. Importantly, interdisciplinary collaboration between technologists, ethicists, lawyers, surgeons and patients will be vital to building consensus on how liability is ascribed as decision-making shifts from surgeons to surgical robotic systems. Mach. There are hundreds of multidisciplinary AI research initiatives at molecular, clinical and societal scales that can help fight COVID-19. the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in To elaborate further, the purpose behind the development of AI is the requirement as well as the demand for automation in this high paced life of humans. While technology may be lessening the scope for human involvement in the creative process, it comes with the possibility for thousands of creators to contribute towards a single piece of artwork. I hope 2021 will see advancements in data stewardship across safety-critical domains, spanning more countries. Intell. Floridi, L. Ethics Inform. September 15, 2020. In particular, we wanted the article to help raise awareness about the issue and encourage engagement with the survey. Take a look at our anniversary Collection for some good examples. This led to the initiative of a ‘bias statement’ in the Workshop of Gender Bias in NLP: authors were encouraged to give explicit consideration to the wider aspects of bias. In a recent paper published in the journal Nature, the researchers proposed a new, interdisciplinary field—machine behavior—that would study artificial intelligence through the … Aims and scope This single-blind peer-reviewed journal publishes original articles on cutting-edge experimental and theoretical research in all areas of quantum artificial intelligence. The scope of Machine Learning in India, as well as in other parts of the world, is high in comparison to other career fields when it comes to job opportunities. My Comment asked whether current studies offer sufficient conceptualization of the bias challenges and whether there exists a clear joined-up effort. It remains an open issue. Addressing this challenge requires collaboration between disciplines and communities. Who are ‘we’? Blodgett, S. L., Barocas, S., Daumé, H. III & Wallach, H. In Proc. Nat. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-00281-z, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-00281-z, Nature Machine Intelligence We had been planning to promote the survey through both the mainstream and social media, but had to postpone as attention focused on the pandemic. At the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we had collectively gotten ahead of ourselves in expecting universal consensus on what makes AI ethical, and how to achieve it in practice. These ‘vulnerable’ robots are made of soft materials and are controlled by multi-sensory neural networks that can evaluate stimuli based on their consequences to homeostasis, the active maintenance of self-integrity. An ISSN is an 8-digit code used to identify newspapers, journals, magazines and periodicals of all kinds and on all media–print and electronic. Nature Machine Intelligence volume 3, ... (A.I.A.-R.) submitted a paper 107 that was in scope for this review; however, we excluded it due to the potential for conflict of interest. Taddeo, M. & Floridi, L. Science 361, 751–752 (2018). We are witnessing encouraging developments, for example dedicated hardware allowing cryptography and secure computation on handheld devices or new theoretical research into granular privacy tracking and budgeting in the field of differential privacy. The Journal is unique in promoting a synthesis of machine learning, data science and computational intelligence research with quantum computing developments. Internet Explorer). The 2020 State of AI Report, widely considered a barometer of the industry, predicts a further rise in privacy-related research and deployment. The field of embodied AI, which grounds knowledge in a vulnerable body’s interaction with the world, remains under-appreciated. We also get out of the office, visiting labs and attending conferences. 13 April 2020; Stoyanovich, J., Van Bavel, J. J. volume 2, page1(2020)Cite this article. We believe that there is a need to explore public attitudes to these questions and developed the iRobotSurgeon Survey. B., Jamjoom, A. M. A. Although the illusion that ‘ethical AI’ is simply a technological matter still lingers, 2020 has seen an important push towards broader acceptance of the sociotechnicity of AI. The Journal also publishes innovative papers reporting on machine intelligence theories, methods and applications inspired by physics and nature, e.g. 8 June 2020; Kaissis, G. A., Makowski, M. R., Rückert, D. & Braren, R. F. Secure, privacy-preserving and federated machine learning in medical imaging. Contributions from the Catholic Church to ethical reflections in the digital era. The first theme is the engineering side of machine intelligences: the development of new models, algorithms and hardware to build intelligent machines. However, each publication was working in a separate direction and efforts were not directed sufficiently to suggesting solutions for the problem. Nat. 11 November 2019; Taddeo, M., McCutcheon, T. & Floridi, L. Trusting artificial intelligence in cybersecurity is a double-edged sword. We found that the format of a Perspective, which is a combination of a review, analysis and opinion, gives authors a chance to explain their vision in depth. For AI to make a real impact and to overcome a hyper fragmented space with limited operational deployments, we need digital cooperation and solidarity across borders and stakeholders, including responsible and scalable approaches for data, models and code sharing. 2 September 2019; Jobin, A., Ienca, M. & Vayena, E. The global landscape of AI ethics guidelines. Common principles are a good start, but they are insufficient on their own to ensure we have ethical AI in the future. For instance, it is crucial to pay attention to who gets to define the ethics of AI, and to the processes that decide what counts as ethical AI. & Marcus, H. J. We are reminded of the anti-natalist argument that life is net suffering, and that, as a result, it is unethical to create new life. Only a few months into the pandemic, many papers appeared on initiatives in applying AI to help in some way. 13 April 2020; Jamjoom, A. I remain worried about researchers and public-sector actors who are more concerned about their own status than their complicity with harmful structures and policies. 1, 446–452 (2019). B., Jamjoom, A. M. A. Hu, Y. et al. Furthermore, in October, the Sapienza University of Rome, which is one of the largest in Europe and oldest worldwide, has been the first academic institution to sign the Call (further universities are expected to sign in the coming months). Particularly popular submissions were patient outcome prediction and diagnosis, imaging tools (in different types of imaging modalities at different length-scales), materials discovery, protein structure, sequencing and drug discovery. 9 March 2020; Eshraghian, J. K. Human ownership of artificial creativity. 20, 243–257 (2010). Multiple people are contributing to public repositories, and the artworks of thousands of people are pooled together in a training set. Thoughts and ideas from our authors and readers are very much welcome. Lab experiments that require more than one person are also being discouraged. It was created by Nature Research in response to the machine learning explosion of the 2010s. My article was written with the intention to address the uncertainty in legal principles surrounding generative AI. In the development of digital contact-tracing apps in particular I’ve been disappointed to see how quickly public health interests have been dismissed in the name of privacy. I hope to see proposals for energy labelling in AI models as potential industry standards. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. But we are sceptical that progress can be made without an understanding of how humans — including affected individuals, decision makers, data scientists and the public at large — perceive algorithms and their outputs. Nat Mach Intell 2, 1 (2020). We mentioned in our first Editorial that we mainly saw three main themes for our research articles, and this remains largely true. https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/10/measuring-gendered-correlations-in-pre.html, https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/09/an-inside-look-at-flood-forecasting.html, https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-00281-z. Mach. Since February, our team has shifted priorities and has been working together with other United Nations agencies including the World Health Organization and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to support the COVID-19 response. The iRobotSurgeon Survey was launched at the start of 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic started to take off. Furthermore, privacy technology and research are evolving fast: new papers are published every day and 2020 saw new conferences, such as PriCon, featuring diverse and multi-faceted research from all over the world. Everything is slower and yet more intense. Namely, I see great urgency to devise participatory and value-sensitive AI design roadmaps in preparation to cope with extreme weather anomalies resulting from anthropogenic climate change. To obtain In particular, surgical and interventional applications usually require engineering researchers to acquire data during those procedures, but this is not possible now. The motivation behind our Comment was to provide the rationale and background for the survey. And so I was motivated by two closely related concerns. Nat. We are fascinated by scientific research, are interested in matters that concern scientific communities and nurture a love for science communication. We invited authors of selected Comments and Perspectives published in Nature Machine Intelligence in the latter half of 2019 and first half of 2020 to describe how their topic has developed, what their thoughts are about the challenges of 2020, and what they look forward to in 2021. They will be skewed to favour those who have had historical access to these basic essentials. Investments in AI research are investments in future prosperity and security. In particular, we would like to see more research on societal expectations and desires on how these systems should be regulated and on what legal frameworks could underpin these developments. To be clear, Nature Machine Intelligence authors remain owners of the research reported, and the code and data supporting the main findings of an article should be openly available. DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.