Seminar on data, artificial intelligence, and ethics: how to strengthen the foundations of our digital society
December, 2023. With more than 70 People in attendance at the Domeyko Hall of the University of Chile's Central Campus, and moderated by Camila Diaz Foxon, executive director of the IMFD, 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 was created in response to concerns raised by several of the institute's researchers in their search for answers to the challenges facing data science in its social context. "Our goal is to take an ethical look at data: starting from the technical, but going beyond," explains Claudio Gutierrez, an academic in the Department of Computing at the University of Chileand an IMFD researcher. "Today, data is everywhere: as People, we are constantly providing data to organizations. And on the other hand, we have algorithm models that are being trained in every dimension and discipline imaginable, using the same data that we, as People, provide," he explains. For the researcher, in general, this field is a no man's land, "a frontier where the legal world, information systems, library science, ethics, politics, computer experts, and what we know as data science and engineeringcoexist, and the question is: who is responsible for this field?".
That is why this group, convened by the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data, includes representatives from various fields, including law, ethics, and computer science, with the hope of expanding as the collaborative work progresses.
Jocelyn Dunstan Escudero, academic at the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Mathematical and Computational Engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and IMFD researcher, referred to the challenges of using data in the health sector 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 essential to consider privacy as a cornerstone of health, because it is a human right."
The director of the Computer Science Department at the University of Chile, Alejandro Hevia, gave a presentation on "Security: how to protect data", emphasizing the contradiction between using data for the benefit of society and the need to protect it and safeguard 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 ways it is similar to oil or even nuclear energy: it can give us very good things, but it is essential to manage it responsibly, because it is very difficult to control mistakes. For example, think of cases of private data leaks and the consequences this can have for societies."
Regarding the care that different institutions take with our data today, Federico Olmedo presented Federico Olmedo, who, together with Matías Toro, both 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? Challenges and perspectives in the Chilean context," highlighting the contradictions that institutions face in having to comply with standards of transparency and privacy, and the alternatives that the academic world can offer to different entities to meet both requirements, such as differential privacy tools.
A comprehensive analysis of current national and international legislation was carried out by Sebastián Dueñas, a researcher in the Law, Science, and Technology Program at 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 being followed by the European Union with the regulation of artificial intelligence independent of the context of the industry in which it is being implemented, unlike what is being done in the United States, where this function is being delegated to an existing body, such as the Federal Trade Commission. "What we have a clear consensus on is the lack of consensus on the issue,", the academic points out. "What is needed is define the purpose of regulation: whether we want to protect, control systems, reduce discrimination, or mitigate risks."
The seminar closed with a presentation by Alberto Coddou, from the UACh Institute of Public Law: "AI 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 that will enable navigation of national national and international regulations on data and artificial intelligence.
All presentations are available on the YouTube channel of the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data. YouTube channel of Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data