To better understand the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Humanity take a look at the movie AlphaGo on Netflix, the story of an artificial intelligence program created by Google’s company DeepMind.
There is the drama of any contest – in this case the drama of man versus machine.
There is also the drama of the struggle within a man, in this case Lee Sedol, struggling to find a solution, any solution, the DeepMind AlphaGo challenge.
But there is an even more important story – who exactly is DeepMind?
Remember, this was the company which – without any significant oversight or patient permission – was given 5 years of private medical information from over a million patient records from the NHS in the UK.
After watching this movie, what’s my take on how this happened?
I don’t think individual patient privacy was even considered; certainly the possible damage to Lee Sedol’s spirit wasn’t considered until during the event itself.
Like most technology companies, I suspect their ethics is based on Utilitareanism, rather than Kant. They focus on the greatest good for the many, rather than treating every single person as an end in themselves.
Put another way, AI and Big Data may be wonderful for society—it may even save millions of lives—but it does require using each persons data set, and indirectly, each person, as a means to an end.
Anyway, after watching this movie, although I think employees of DeepMind were good intentioned, I doubt they even considered whether or not they had the right to these individual medical records, and even after this travesty came to light, I would bet they felt they did nothing wrong.
It’s just not part of their wheelhouse.