Ethical Questions for the AI Revolution

With Irina Raicu, J.D.

AI is already influencing our lives in ways that are both obvious and hidden. Algorithms play a role in government (security, policing, criminal justice), in employment (HR), in education, in healthcare, and even when we make reservations for dinner. But lots of related key questions remain unanswered. Is “data-based” really synonymous with “objective”? Should everything be optimized, or are there areas of society that should be protected from AI? How can we work towards greater transparency and prevent unintended social consequences as AI is implemented in various aspects of life?

Irina Raicu is the director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional, was formerly an attorney in private practice, and has written for a variety of local and national publications including The Atlantic and Recode. Her work addresses issues ranging from online privacy to net neutrality, data ethics to social media’s impact on friendship and family, the digital divide to the ethics of encryption, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. Raicu is a member of the Partnership on AI's Working Group on Fair, Transparent, and Accountable AI. She tweets at @IEthics and is the primary contributor to the blog Internet Ethics: Views from Silicon Valley.

As a teenager, Raicu came to the U.S. with her family as a refugee from Romania; her background and Jewish identity informs her interest in the Internet as a tool whose use has profound ethical implications worldwide.