Earlier this year, Sundar Pichai shared seven AI principles that Google aims to follow in its work. Google also shared some best practices for building responsible AI. Yesterday, they shared the additional initiative and processes they have introduced to live up to their AI principles. Some of these initiatives include educating people about ethics in technology, introducing a formal review structure for new projects, products, and deals.
Educating Googlers on ethical AI
Making Googlers aware of the ethical issues: Additional learning material has been added to the Ethics in Technology Practice course that teaches technical and non-technical Googlers about how they can address the ethical issues that arise while at work. In the future, Google is planning to make this course accessible for everyone across the company.
Introducing AI Ethics Speaker Series: This series features external experts across different countries, regions, and professional disciplines. So far, eight sessions have been conducted with 11 speakers covering topics from bias in natural language processing (NLP) to the use of AI in criminal justice.
AI fairness: A new module on fairness is added to Google’s free Machine Learning Crash Course. This course is available in 11 languages and is being used by more than 21,000 Google employees. The fairness module explores different types of human biases that can corp in the training data and also provide strategies to identify and evaluate their effects.
Review structure for new projects, products, and deals
Google has employed a formal review structure to check the scaling, severity, and likelihood of best- and worst-case scenarios of new projects, products, and deals. This review structure consists of three core groups:
- Innovation team: This team consists of user researchers, social scientists, ethicists, human rights specialists, policy and privacy advisors, and legal experts. They are responsible for day-to-day operations and initial assessments.
- Senior experts: This group consists of senior experts from a range of disciplines across Alphabet Inc.. They provide technological, functional, and application expertise.
- Council of senior executives: This group handles the decisions that affect multiple products and technologies.
Currently, more than 100 reviews have been done under this formal review structure. In the future, Google plans to create an external advisory group, which will comprise of experts from a variety of disciplines.
To read more about Google’s initiatives towards ethical AI, check out their official announcement.