Overcoming Barriers to Cross-cultural Cooperation in AI Ethics and Governance
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Overcoming Barriers to Cross-cultural Cooperation in AI Ethics and Governance Seán S. ÓhÉigeartaigh 1,2 Zhe Liu 2,4
& Jess
Whittlestone 1 & Yang Liu 1,2 & Yi Zeng 2,3 &
Received: 3 January 2020 / Accepted: 22 April 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Achieving the global benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) will require international cooperation on many areas of governance and ethical standards, while allowing for diverse cultural perspectives and priorities. There are many barriers to achieving this at present, including mistrust between cultures, and more practical challenges of coordinating across different locations. This paper focuses particularly on barriers to cooperation between Europe and North America on the one hand and East Asia on the other, as regions which currently have an outsized impact on the development of AI ethics and governance. We suggest that there is reason to be optimistic about achieving greater cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance. We argue that misunderstandings between cultures and regions play a more important role in undermining cross-cultural trust, relative to fundamental disagreements, than is often supposed. Even where fundamental differences exist, these may not necessarily prevent productive cross-cultural cooperation, for two reasons: (1) cooperation does not require achieving agreement on principles and standards for all areas of AI; and (2) it is sometimes possible to reach agreement on practical issues despite disagreement on more abstract values or principles. We believe that academia has a key role to play in promoting cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance, by building greater mutual understanding, and clarifying where different forms of agreement will be both necessary and possible. We make a number of recommendations for practical steps and initiatives, including translation and multilingual publication of key documents, researcher exchange programmes, and development of research agendas on cross-cultural topics. Keywords Artificial intelligence . AI ethics . AI governance . Cross-cultural cooperation
Seán S. ÓhÉigeartaigh and Jess Whittlestone contributed equally to this work.
* Seán S. ÓhÉigeartaigh [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
S. S. ÓhÉigeartaigh et al.
1 Introduction Artificial intelligence has been identified as a key suite of technologies for many countries worldwide, in large part motivated by its general-purpose nature (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014). AI technologies, and machine learning techniques in particular, are being fruitfully applied to a vast range of domains, including language translation, scientific research, education, logistics, transport and many others. It is clear that AI will affect economies, societies and cultures profoundly at a national, international and global level. This has resulted in increasing attention being paid to both AI ethics: questions about how we should develop and deploy AI systems, given their potential im
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