Google: Making AI responsible is the only race that matters – 05/23/2023 – Tech

This year, generative artificial intelligence (AI) captured the world’s imagination, being used by millions of people to increase creativity and improve productivity. Meanwhile, more and more startups and organizations are bringing AI-powered products and technologies to market faster than ever before.

AI is the most profound technology humanity is working on today and it will affect every sector and aspect of life. Given these high stakes, the more people that are working to advance the science of AI, the better in terms of expanding opportunities for communities everywhere.

While some have tried to reduce this momentum to a mere competitive AI race, we see it as something bigger. At Google, we’ve been bringing AI to our products and services for over a decade and making it available to our users. We care deeply about this. However, what matters even more is the race to build AI responsibly and ensure that as a society we get it right.

We are approaching this in three ways. First, by boldly pursuing innovations to make AI more useful for everyone. We continue to use AI to significantly improve our products, from Google Search and Gmail to Android and Maps. These advances mean drivers across Europe can now find more economical routes; tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are helped to communicate in their new homes; Flood forecasting tools are able to predict events farther in advance.

Google DeepMind’s work on AlphaFold, in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, has resulted in a pioneering understanding of over 200 million cataloged proteins known to science, opening up new health possibilities.

We are also focused on enabling others outside our company to innovate with AI, whether through our cloud offerings and APIs, or with new initiatives like the Google for Startups Growth program, which supports European entrepreneurs using AI to benefit health and people’s well-being. We’re launching an AI social innovation fund to help social enterprises solve some of Europe’s most pressing challenges.

Second, we are committed to developing and deploying technology responsibly, reflecting our deep commitment to earning the trust of our users. That’s why we published AI principles in 2018, based on the thesis that AI should be developed to benefit society, avoiding harmful applications.

We have many examples of how to put these principles into practice, such as building guardrails to limit misuse of our Universal Translator. This experimental AI-powered video dubbing service helps experts translate a speaker’s voice and match their lip movements. It has enormous potential to increase understanding of learning, but we are aware of the risks it can pose in the hands of malicious people and therefore we have made it accessible only to authorized partners. As AI evolves, so does our approach: this month, we announced that we will provide ways to identify when we use it to generate content on our services.

Finally, realizing the potential of AI is not something one company can do alone. In 2020, I shared my opinion that AI needs to be regulated in a way that balances innovation and possible harm. With technology now at an inflection point, and as I return to Europe this week, I still believe that AI is too important not to be regulated, and too important not to be well regulated.

Developing policy frameworks that anticipate potential harms and release benefits will require in-depth discussions between governments, industry experts, publishers, academia, and civil society. Legislators may not need to start from scratch: existing regulations provide useful frameworks for managing the potential risks of new technologies. But continued investment in research and development for responsible AI will be important — as will ensuring that AI is safely applied, especially where regulations are still evolving.

Increased international cooperation will be key. The US and Europe are strategic allies and partners. It is important that the two work together to create robust pro-innovation frameworks for emerging technology, based on common values ​​and goals. We will continue to work with experts, social scientists and entrepreneurs who are creating standards for responsible AI development on both sides of the Atlantic.

AI presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the world to meet its climate goals, build sustainable growth, maintain global competitiveness and much more. However, we are still in the early days, and there is a lot of work ahead. We look forward to doing this work with others and building AI together, safely and responsibly so that everyone can benefit.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves