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Ouchchy2020AIHeadlines

Leila Ouchchy, Allen Coin, and Veljko Dubljević, "AI in the headlines: the portrayal of the ethical issues of artificial intelligence in the media"

Bibliographic info

Ouchchy, L., Coin, A., & Dubljević, V. (2020). AI in the headlines: the portrayal of the ethical issues of artificial intelligence in the media. AI & SOCIETY, 35(4), 927-936.

Commentary

This paper presents a method to specifically analyze the media portrayal of ethical issues of AI, which is helpful for understanding how coverage of these issues may shape public debate and even policy-making around AI. As such, I think this study can serve as a bridge between academia and society, by giving insight into the way citizen's opinions on ethical AI are shaped by regular media. Furthermore, because public opinion is important to future development and adoption of new technologies, this study can inform government, academia and AI companies what AI applications and regulations are in demand. Furthermore, this paper introduces a method to evaluate media articles based on many indicators, including tone, ethical issue, type of technology, and principles based on ethical frameworks.
A main weakness of the study is that the evaluated media articles were not assessed on their popularity, which makes it difficult to know how much they influenced public opinion. Furthermore, the research excludes social media data (e.g., tweets), which are an important indicator of public opinion. Lastly, the results of the study show that the media coverage of ethics of AI is still shallow, but a more thorough effort could have been made to explain why this is the case and how this can be improved.

Excerpts & Key Quotes

The importance of adequate media coverage

"Because the members of the general public, as both consumers in the market economy and constituents of a liberal democracy, are key stakeholders for technology adoption — and, to a certain extent, for public policy and regulatory oversight — public opinion could affect what kind of AI is developed in the future and how AI is regulated by the government."

Comment:

I think this passage adequately describes what is at stake here; why adequate media coverage is important. I specifically like the double emphasis on individuals both as stakeholder in the market economy and participants in a liberal democracy. This means that measuring public opinion on ethical AI is important because citizens are the ones who should use and buy the product, as well as inform policy around AI.

What spurs media coverage on ethical AI?

"However, it should be noted that it is not expressly the case that the academic debate migrated into the public, but rather that separate highly popularized events, such as the Tesla auto-pilot accident, have also increased public concerns about AI and recognition of the need for ethical oversight."

Comment:

This quote shows that public debate on ethical AI is mainly spurred by polarized (often negative) events. I think this indicates a missed opportunity from government and academia, because these institutions should take on a leading role when it comes to maintaining and sustaining debates around ethical AI. I believe that if these institutions educate citizens about the topics present in the debate in an accessible manner, media outlets will pick up on that and start publishing stories as well.

Authors have insufficient knowledge of AI or ethics

"Since media articles writing about some of the most common issues gave recommendations that were not concretely related to the issue they dealt with, it is safe to assert that the discussion is sophisticated in tone (e.g., avoiding hype), but not yet in content. This is the case both with the details of AI technology implementation and with the ethical frameworks that are supposed to guide the development. This suggests that the articles about AI and ethics are written by authors with insufficient knowledge of AI technology or ethics."

Comment:

This passage represents the main findings of the study, and makes quite a bold claim about the (lack of) knowledge of the authors of media articles about ethical AI. While I understand that there are multiple possible reasons underlying this problem, I find it a pity that the authors of this paper do not elaborate on this point further. For example, maybe more effort from AI and ethics experts is required to correctly inform journalists and editors (e.g., by organizing special 'AI in the media' workshops). The paper does state that a possible solution lies in the collaboration and inclusion of ethicists and AI experts in both research and public debate, but this statement remains very abstract.