Governments\u2019 growing comfort with AI is bringing new ethical questions to the public service.<\/p>\n
The popular explosion of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT is forcing agencies to contend with how to harness the productivity benefits while safeguarding against harm to citizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But are these questions new? AI expert Professor Toby Walsh doesn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n
Walsh has spent more than 40 years<\/a> following developments in AI, and holds or has held positions at dozens of globally recognised research institutions.<\/p>\n Speaking at the Digital Transformation Agency\u2019s AI in Government showcase last week<\/a>, Walsh said AI raises similar questions to other transformative technologies.<\/p>\n \tEssential reading for Australia\u2019s public service.<\/p>\n \n Stay ahead of policy shifts, leadership moves, and the big ideas shaping the public service. Sign up to The Mandarin\u2019s free newsletters. <\/p>\n By continuing, you agree to our Terms & Conditions<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n He said this offers hints as to what can go right or wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is not magic. It\u2019s just another technology. Another tool,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the big take-home messages I\u2019ve got for you this morning is that the questions you should ask are the questions that you always ask.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are the questions you asked when the internet started, the questions you asked when we industrialised our factories, the questions we\u2019ve asked throughout the course of history.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are new harms, and you will read in the newspaper plentiful stories of some of those places where things haven\u2019t worked out.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s new things to worry about because the technology AI will let us do things cheaper, faster, at a greater scale than previously.\u201d<\/p>\n A Hippocratic oath for AI<\/p>\n Walsh pointed to medicine as an area where technological advancements have visible life-or-death consequences.<\/p>\n He said the four pillars of medical ethics, beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice, offer guidance about how to consider risk and reward in AI.<\/p>\n \u201cOver a couple of hundred years, we thought very carefully about how to use medicine, medical technologies in a responsible way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a very good place to start thinking about the responsible ethical use of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Beneficence<\/p>\n Beneficence is the idea people should \u201cdo good\u201d, or contribute in a net positive way.<\/p>\n Walsh used an example from his recent work to show how this can be applied in practice.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been working with a big multinational company. They had a fleet of 800 trucks. We went in there and said, \u2018We can optimise the routes of your trucks. I can save 15% of your fuel bill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were saving them $40 million a year on fuel, which doubled the company\u2019s profits that year. So, they were very happy.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I was very happy for the planet because every one of those dollars was diesel that wasn\u2019t going to put CO2 up into the atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n Non-malificence<\/p>\n Non-malificence is to \u201cdo no harm\u201d. This applies equally to individuals and groups.<\/p>\n Walsh said in the case of the logistics project, he wouldn\u2019t have accepted the gig if it had resulted in mass layoffs.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we began the project, I remember saying to the CEO \u2026 \u2018Please promise me that you won\u2019t tell me fantastic job, Toby, we\u2019ve fired 15% of our drivers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the job, the CEO said, \u2018Look, here\u2019s the number of drivers. It\u2019s the same as when you started, but they\u2019re all happier, and the company is more sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n Autonomy<\/p>\n Autonomy is about respecting individual rights. In medicine, it is the ethical principle that people should give informed consent for interventions.<\/p>\n Walsh said this principle is important in considering how AI is implemented in public-facing ways.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we put artificial intelligence into people\u2019s lives, [we must] make sure that people are aware.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was somewhat disturbed by Google\u2019s latest AI assistant that can ring up a hairdresser or ring up a restaurant and book a table for you.<\/p>\n \u201cIt umms and ahhs like a human. And it doesn\u2019t say at the beginning of the call \u2026 \u2018I\u2019m Toby\u2019s AI assistant, I\u2019d like to make a booking for him\u2019. It pretends to be a human.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat doesn\u2019t seem to me to be very good informed consent.\u201d<\/p>\n Justice<\/p>\n Justice is the principle of fairness, which states that risks and rewards should be evenly spread.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the context of artificial intelligence, Walsh relates this to things like algorithmic and data biases.<\/p>\n \u201cData by its very nature is historical, and it reflects the biases of the system in which that data was captured,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we\u2019ve sent more patrols into poor neighbourhoods in the past, and that\u2019s why we found more crime in poor neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the crime that was reported and prosecuted. There\u2019s a lot of crime that took place that we never saw. It\u2019s not clear how we could capture that statistic.<\/p>\n \u201cThis fundamental problem applies to so many places that AI is being applied to. We\u2019re trying to predict something here, where we don\u2019t have the ground truth. We have a proxy.\u201d<\/p>\n The precautionary principle<\/p>\n Walsh proposes that the \u201cseeming unpredictability\u201d of AI warrants a fifth \u201cprecautionary\u201d principle.<\/p>\n He said regulators should learn from some of the things that went wrong in previous technological pivot points.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are going to have to think carefully about the long-term consequences of things,\u201d he said<\/p>\n \u201c[The precautionary principle] is an idea that was introduced into international and environmental law \u2026\u00a0where we might not fully understand the causal relationships between the technology and the impact it might be having on the environment.<\/p>\n \u201cLots of people are starting to use AI bots as therapists or companions. I think we need to be rather careful about the consequences of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Governments\u2019 growing comfort with AI is bringing new ethical questions to the public service. 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