Seminar on data, artificial intelligence and ethics: how to strengthen the foundations of our digital society
December, 2023. With more than 70 People, in the Domeyko Hall of the Central House of the University of Chile and with the moderation of Camila Diaz Foxonexecutive director of the IMFD, was held the first Seminar on Data, Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: how to strengthen the foundations of our digital society under the auspices of the Ethics Group of the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data.
The IMFD Ethics Group arose from the concern of several of the institute's researchers in the search for answers to the challenges faced by data science in its social context. "Our goal is to take an ethical look at data: starting from the technical, but going beyond that," explains Claudio Gutierrez, an academic in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chile and IMFD researcher. "Nowadays, data is everywhere: as People, we are constantly delivering data to organizations. And on the other hand, we have algorithm models that are being trained in all the dimensions and disciplines that we can imagine, with this same data that as People, we deliver," he explains. For the researcher, in general this no man's land, "a frontier where the legal world, information systems, librarianship, ethics, politics, computer experts, what we know as data science and engineering, allcoexist, and the question is: to whom does this area belong?who is in this area?".
This is why in this group, convened by the Millennium Institute Millennium Institute Foundational Research on DataThis is why this group, convened by the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data, includes representatives from various fields, including law, ethics and computer science, and expects to expand as the collaborative work progresses.
Jocelyn Dunstan Escuderoan academic from the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Mathematical and Computational Engineering of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and IMFD researcher, referred to the challenges of data use in the health area in her presentation "Data Science in Medicine".There are many things that can be seen and done in medicine using clinical data and language models, so it is necessary and fundamental to consider that privacy is a cornerstone in health, because it is a human right".
The director of the Computer Science Department of the Universidad de Chile, Alejandro Heviagave a presentation on "Security: how to protect data", with emphasis on the contradiction between the use of data for the benefit of society, with emphasis on the contradiction represented by the use of data for the benefit of society and the need to protect them and take care of privacy at the same time. "It is very common to hear the phrase that data is the new oil, and I believe that in some sense it is similar to oil or even nuclear energy: since it can give us very good things but it is essential to manage it responsibly, because it is very difficult to control errors: for example, think of the cases of leaks of private data and the consequences that this can have for societies."
On the care that the different institutions have today with our data, presented Federico Olmedowho, together with Matías Toroboth academics from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chile and IMFD researchers, have worked on an analysis of the national context in the presentation "Are public institutions protecting our privacy? "Are public institutions protecting our privacy? Challenges and perspectives in the Chilean context", highlighting the contradictions that institutions have when they must comply with standards of transparency and privacy, and the alternatives that the academic world can put forward to protect our privacy. alternatives that the academic world can make available to the different available to the different entities to comply with both requirements, such as differential privacy tools.such as differential privacy tools.
A complete analysis of the current national and international legislative situation was carried out by Sebastián Dueñas, researcher at the Law, Science and Technology Program of the Catholic University and one of the most active members of the IMFD Ethics Group, in "Context and regulatory challenges of data and AI", in which he explained the model that the European Union is following with the regulation of artificial intelligence independent of the context of the industry in which it is being implemented, unlike what the United States is doing where this function is being delegated to an existing body, such as the Federal Trade Commission, as in the U.S. case. "In what we have a clear consensus, is the lack of consensus on the subject", emphasizes the academic.The academic emphasizes. "What is necessary is to define what is the purpose of regulation: if we want to protect, controlWe need to define the purpose of regulation: whether we want to safeguard, control the systems, reduce discrimination and mitigate risks.
The seminar closed with a presentation by Alberto Coddou, from the Instituto de Derecho Público UACh: "IA and Human Rights: what strategy should Chilean foreign policy follow?", in which he shared the progress of a project he is developing for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that aims to define guidelines to navigate in national and international regulations national and international regulations on data and artificial intelligence.
All presentations are available on the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data YouTube channel of the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data.