OCS Seminars
Dr. Wendell Wallach: Minimizing Risks While Maximizing the Benefits of AI and Big Data
Abstract:
Artificial intelligence and Big Data are beginning to touch nearly every aspect of modern society, and to amplify the impact of other emerging technologies. The benefits are myriad, but there are also dangers. How can we minimize the risks and undesirable societal consequences of AI through engineering, ethics, and oversight? What responsibilities for the deployment of innovative technologies lie with engineers, with corporations, and with the military? Are there new forms of agile and comprehensive governance of AI that might help ensure that Big Data and AI do not slip beyond our control?
Biography:
Wendell Wallach is senior advisor to The Hastings Center. He is also a scholar, consultant, and author at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, where he has chaired Technology and Ethics studies for the past eleven years. His latest book, a primer on emerging technologies, is entitled, A Dangerous Master: How to keep technology from slipping beyond our control. In addition, he co-authored (with Colin Allen) Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong (2009). The eight volume Library of Essays on the Ethics of Emerging Technologies(edited by Wallach) was published by Routledge in Winter 2017. He received the World Technology Award for Ethics in 2014 and for Journalism and Media in 2015, as well as a Fulbright Research Chair at the University of Ottawa in 2015-2016. Presently he is the Distinguished Austin J. Fagothey Visiting Professor at Santa Clara University. The World Economic Forum appointed Mr. Wallach co-chair of its Global Future Council on Technology, Values, and Policy for the 2016-2018 term.
