AI Revolution - Essay Sample

Introduction

During the first half of the 20th century, there was a significant increase of familiarization in science fiction across the globe. This started with the "heartless" Tin man in the Wizard of Oz to the impersonation of Maria in Metropolis. By 1960, there was an influx of scientists and philosophers who had the concept of artificial intelligence assimilated with their knowledge (Reid, 2016). One notable person is Alan Turing, who studied mathematical possibility around artificial intelligence. According to him, human beings can apply the available information together with their natural understanding to solve different problems and make sound decisions. Turing goes further to argue that if a human can use machines to solve issues and make decisions, why can't machine perform similar tasks on their own? The possibility of creating thinking machines to replace human beings has raised numerous ethical concerns (Turing, 2009). The concerns revolve around the fact that the machines have no physical harm to humans. Facial recognition technology is an invention in the AI that uses software to mark facial characteristics and save the data as a face template. Algorithms are then used to compare facial images to discover facial patterns for verification and authentication. Even though this technology plays a critical role in ensuring safety and security now and in the coming years, the prevailing ethical concerns revolve around how it works and public safety.

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In the U.S, the facial recognition technology has been installed at different airports and other border points with the hopes to nab people trying to enter the country using another person's passport. This has been seen as an important step forward towards protecting the U.S from threats. The technology has also proved crucial in schools when it comes to cases of shootings and reduces insecurity (Jain, 2007). This is evidence that the use of facial expression is becoming commonplace. Shelters for victims of domestic violence are also in need of technology due to the security concern for their guest and staff. With this technology, there will be a surety that people entering the shelter are registered guests and staff. This is a significant project towards ensuring the safety and security of the guests and staff and therefore, should be pursued.

The project will be validated as successful if it meets or exceeds the expectations of the stakeholders. In this case, the stakeholders involve those who either case for or have vested interest in the shelters for victims of domestic violence. This involves those actively engaging with the work of the project or have significant gains when the project succeeds. The sponsor of the Shelter has the authority to assign resources linked to the project, and this is a stakeholder. Victims of domestic violence, suppliers, contractors, and the government form part of the stakeholders. The face recognition project management team will also be part of the stakeholders since they will play a critical part in ensuring the security and safety of all members of the organization. The identification of all stakeholders in any projects plays a critical part, and leaving out important stakeholders can be a project killer. The project manager should be consulted on project goals and development because they guide the project throughout its lifecycle.

Since this is a sensitive area of organization management, there is a need to collect all facts important in managing the project. The additional facts include how the project might affect the stakeholders, the consequences related to the ethical breach, and the obligations (rights, justice, policies). Practical steps that might be taken to access relevant information surrounding the ethical landscape includes:

• Identify facts in different situations
• Evaluate if the situation involves legal or ethical concern
• Identify options and possible issues that come with ethical problems
• Assess the possible options
• Choose the most appropriate option

The technical aspect of identifying intruders to shelters for victims of domestic violence is a good idea. Nevertheless, the system is open to abuse and can be biased. This is based on accuracy issues. Evidence shows that the system has an accuracy error of 35 percent for the non-white men, women, and children. But it can go amiss, such as when a camera fails to highlight the racial sensitivity, or when the application used to predict future criminals becomes bias against black people. Besides the talk of accuracy, there are other fundamental issues such as abuse of its implication (Bossmann, 2016). The technology can be seen as a loophole to additional surveillance in an event or location that is inappropriate. This creates a big debate on the "big brother" watching society. There is also the issue around data storage of the collected information. Even though this in itself if a good thing, it allows the agencies concerned to store information and images about a suspect who can be otherwise innocent. Information for innocent people can be stored alongside genuine criminals, and this raises privacy concerns. It also violates the rights of people to their image despite their innocence. This means that the designer needs to address privacy issues and accuracy of images collected.

Through the rights and responsibility lens framework, the project management team will evaluate the entire project and understand the values that influence some of the choices and decisions made to ensure that there is safety, security, and privacy of the technology. The framework outlines how the values are prioritized when ethical decisions are made. For this facial recognition project, the evaluation will be based on rationality, sensibility, autonomy, and equality. Rationality involves the application of analytical thinking skills to validate the principles to be used in decision making and avoid violation of guest privacy (Jain & Li, 2011). Sensibility involves the use of the heart and personal emotions to identify principles for decision making. Autonomy, on the other hand, is the personal perception of what is seen as ethical while the aspect of equality relies on the community's perception of ethical issues.

Conflicting moral values will occur when there is a clash between different world-views. A groups' important and cherished assumptions on how to live may differ from the values held by another. For the project, there is a conflicting view of privacy and the need to ensure the safety of guests and staff at the facility. When groups have different concepts of privacy and safety, they often highlight more on the importance of different things, and this creates incompatibility in goals (Smith, 2018). This creates conflict. Since moral values are stable, people become unwilling to negotiate concerning the needs of other people in the same organization. There are patterns that shape how people understand facts and issues which at the end help create a sense of identity. Social reality can be used to reconcile the conflicts by setting boundaries on what people can do. This further affects how emotions are labeled and acted on. To this extent, moral values need to be understood within the realm of the social world.

Addressing the ethical issues around facial recognition technology requires a better understanding of the ethical issue, the identity of fundamental values involved, the ranking of the ethical principles which are most relevant, and creating an action plan that will help the project team in addressing the ethical issues. In addressing the ethical issues, the project team needs to identify the facts around the ethical issues, determine the legal obligation and duties of the project team and identify the interested people involved with the ethical issue. The ethical issue around data privacy will be prioritized because it involves both the guest and staff members in the organization.

The appropriate person to take steps in addressing ethical issues is the project manager. To ensure effective achievement of the project goals and objectives, the project manager should demonstrate respect, fairness, and display a sense of responsibility while making decisions concerning ethical issues. The behaviors are expected to create a sustainable foundation for better decision, setting grounds rules for the overall behavior of stakeholders. Effective decisions should be made before the project starts, and this is done if the team wants to advance its purposes. Decision made that leads to unplanned and detrimental results is ineffective. The key to achieving effective decision for the project is to assess the choices based on the capability to accomplish the most important goals.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there has been a lot of concerns when it comes to artificial intelligence. This is based on the fact that technology seeks to replace human beings with machines. Scholars argue that if a human can use machines to solve issues and make decisions, machines can perform similar tasks on their own. Facial recognition technology has been faced with ethical issues related to the privacy of data, accuracy, and safety of users. This calls for the need of the stakeholders in the sector to sensitize users on the importance of technology and enhance its efficiency.

References

Bossmann, J. (2016). Top 9 ethical issues in artificial intelligence. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/top-10-ethical-issues-in-artificial-intelligence/

Jain, A. K. (2007). Technology: biometric recognition. Nature, 449(7158), 38.

Jain, A. K., & Li, S. Z. (2011). Handbook of face recognition. New York: Springer.

Reid, M. (2016). Rethinking the Fourth Amendment in the Age of Supercomputers, Artificial Intelligence, and Robots. W. Va. L. Rev., 119, 863.

Smith, R. (2018). 5 core principles to keep AI ethical. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/keep-calm-and-make-ai-ethical/

Turing, A. M. (2009). Computing machinery and intelligence. In Parsing the Turing Test (pp. 23-65). Springer, Dordrecht.