eBay and LinkedIn founders support fund for ethical AI research

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s foundation have each invested $10 million in a fund to support ethical AI research. In this way, negative consequences of artificial intelligence must be prevented.

Reid says it is important that artificial intelligence benefits society and that damage is limited. Although decisions based on this intelligence can have a lot of influence on, for example, healthcare, transport and criminal law, the code and data behind these decisions are largely invisible, he says. One of the leading organizations of the fund, which has a total of 27 million dollars, is the American MIT.

The director of MIT’s Media Lab, Joi Ito, argues that the rapid development of artificial intelligence raises several questions. One of the most important questions is how can artificial intelligence be prevented from being subject to the same prejudices or biases as society. He wants to ensure that systems still to be developed are not only smart, but also act socially responsible.

The fund called ‘Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund’ aims to benefit research in these directions by providing financial support to various projects. The Knight Foundation, which is supporting the project with $5 million, says it’s important that AI research isn’t just shaped by engineers and companies. Many different parties are currently researching artificial intelligence, including Google, Apple, Facebook and OpenAI. The latter organization was founded by various tech companies and focuses on the development of artificial intelligence without direct commercial application.