GSOE Executive in Residence Ethical Design: An Artificial Intelligence Imperative
Dr. Tilak Agerwala serves as the 2019/2020 Executive in Residence and brings to The Grove School of Engineering decades of experience in the development of advanced computing capabilities and the application of modeling, simulation, analytics, and machine learning, to enable transformational solutions in science, engineering, healthcare, education and national security.
Ethical Design: An Artificial Intelligence Imperative - Systems using Artificial Intelligence (AI) are rapidly growing in capability, impact, and influence. Used by millions of people, they offer a significant opportunity to improve human well-being. At the same time, examples of AI misuse and failures abound. AI technology has been used to manipulate voters and to spread disinformation and create social unrest. Failures include machine bias in criminal sentencing, flawed voice-recognition technology leading to the deportation of thousands of students, fatal driverless car crashes, and surgical robot incidents. These scenarios can violate privacy, threaten security, and even kill, raising ethical issues. The impact of failures can be mitigated using ethical design approaches. Recognizing this state of affairs, governments, professional societies, and institutions are establishing guidelines and regulations for the ethical design of AI systems. The presentation describes the current AI landscape, provides an overview of Ethical Design, includes practical suggestions for AI developers (“everyday ethics”), and identifies open research questions in the areas of “ethically aligned AI” and “fully ethical agents.” In conclusion: AI designers and developers must build lawful, ethical, and robust systems, by practicing “everyday ethics”; government, academia, and industry must develop cross-disciplinary research programs in ethical design; and consumers of AI technology must raise their awareness of the potential for the misuse of AI.
BIOGRAPHY- Dr. Agerwala’s career has focused on developing advanced research programs and game-changing strategic initiatives and on bringing innovative computing technologies to market. He is an IBM Emeritus, Adjunct Associate Professor, Pace University, New York, Adjunct Professor, National Institute for Advanced Studies, Bangalore, and Member, TKMA Consulting. In his IBM career, spanning 35 years, Dr Agerwala held executive positions in research, strategy, advanced development, marketing, and business development. He was part of and led teams that developed and delivered leadership cyberinfrastructure technologies and supercomputers to industry, academia, and the national labs. As vice president, Systems, (2002 to 2013), he was responsible for IBM’s research and advanced technology activities worldwide in future systems hardware and software technologies, including the BlueGene supercomputer. As vice president of Data Centric Systems (2013-2014) his team established a new paradigm for scalable systems leading to the delivery of the powerful supercomputer, Summit, to Oakridge National Lab.
Dr. Agerwala is a member of the NSF Advisory Committees on Engineering, Advanced Cyber Infrastructure, and Business and Operations. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE and a recipient of the W. Wallace McDowell Award from the IEEE Computer Society. Tilak has a Bachelor of Technology degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from The Johns Hopkins University. From 1975 to 1978, he was an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at The University of Texas, Austin.