So I just wanted to set the scene really for today's wonderful set of talks,
vignettes around the range and scope of what's going on around the challenges of
ethics in many of the advanced technology settings that we were almost engaged in.
And also to explain where this all came from.
So we know that the Schwarzman Institute itself, the Schwarzman Centre itself is a much bigger endeavour involving the humanities in general.
And one thing to be very clear about when people heard the announcement of 150 million pounds.
Some people mistakenly imagine that was for the Institute for Ethics and I.
No, it's it's a part of that gift.
And it's a part that is particularly exciting because it's there to support human talent,
to support appointments in the area, in the Faculty of Philosophy in particular.
And I'll talk about this. So it's a significant but a very minority part of that gift, but it's a significant one.
The whole challenge of this is, of course,
premised on the fact that we know that computer science and particularly artificial intelligence present huge challenges.
This is one of my favourite quotes. This is from cybernetics. Father Norbert Vena in 1948 already foresaw that, as he called it,
the ultra rapid computing machine was an ideal central nervous system for an apparatus for automatic control 1948.
He foresaw the opportunities for. Unheard of amounts of good and evil, and boy, was he right there.
And of course, the other forcing function that we recognise in that much technology accelerates under the impulse of of conflict, sadly.
So whether it's Bletchley Park, where of course, so much of the early work on automated computing happened kept much of it classified sharing himself,
of course, working there or it was the Manhattan project where computation was required.
This forcing function accelerated by the demands of the technology, but also very quickly led to issues around the fundamental ethical questions.
The other thing I like to present is the fact that modern AI is understood very often to simply be all about machine learning.
And as somebody who has been working the field since the late 70s,
I've seen a number of cycles of A.I. come and go, and in that time, different methodologies have held sway.
Back in the day was rule based systems. They're improving a whole range of methods to do search.
And each time round the cycle of enthusiasm, particular human capabilities fell to the dominance of the machines.
There was always a question around the ethical deployment of this, even back in the 80s when people were talking about building expert systems.
What about the experts? The systems were displays. Could we trust the actual diagnosis the systems would give us?
Were the accounts explicable and understandable and so on?
So there is no there is no shift in some of the fundamental challenges facing us over many decades.
But what has happened clearly in recent times is the emergence of a particular class of computing power,
a method that has led to some breakthrough moments. These so-called deep neural networks,
various forms of machine learning have led both to the try the triumph of machines over particular areas of human expertise.
This, of course, is AlphaGo is triumph over loss of dull and most recently achieving extraordinary results
in what was thought again to be quite difficult to master areas of problem solving.
This is a multi-strategy king called Starcraft. It's it's the latest achievement again of the DeepMind Science Research Labs, of course.
Within all of that, there's plenty of good things going on, but again, sometimes with issues around the the ethics.
This is the Google DeepMind work on diagnosing various diseases from the retinal scans that were available,
whether it's various forms of, in this case, this is diabetic retinopathy.
These systems are very good at detecting patterns and coming up with all sorts of really rather intrusive classifications.
But even there, that was an issue.
Ultimately that fell into the whole area of was the data used to train these systems acquired with the appropriate level of informed consent.
It is almost impossible to think of an arm deployment mode in which ethical questions don't abound.
Oxford's own work in letting that wonderful work to actually get to the level of human expertise in lip reading.
You can imagine various forms of more intriguing deployment of these kinds of technologies.
In fact, it was the central thesis of 2001. How, if you remember, read the lips of the astronauts in the pod or indeed facial recognition,
which is already causing concerns about its sensibilities and sensitivities around particular
forms of bias given certain sorts of training regime and given a particular deployment note.
The more obvious ones, of course, range from what you do with autonomous vehicles to how you should restrict
and control the weaponization of of platforms such as A.I. included in drone.
More extensively, we worry about the use of extensive amounts of data in domains such as predictive policing or
indeed at a national scale when deployed by states such as China in that social credit system.
We worry about the flows of data from our mobiles, from our devices.
In fact, my group in Oxford has spent a lot of time trying to understand just what that ecosystem looks like,
and it's clear that the flows of data are extensive. There are numerous.
This is just one particular flow of data for one app surrounded by a few others on a phone that we able to
track and understand just how extraordinary the economy of data exchange is and where is the control of that?
And where's the oversight and insight in that? Often your ethical challenges or cheek by jowl with questions around governance and regulation,
and within all of this, we have concerns about the emergence of dominant platforms both in.
East and West, who seem to have so much control in this emerging world of data enabled A.I. algorithms
and data enabled air raid algorithms that I say aren't just about machine learning,
they can just as much be about expert system reasoning about various forms and model based reasoning that are a very large
set of methods now available to the computer scientist and the engineer and various people looking to exploit the methods.
And even if it is, in some cases, statistics represented various forms of linear regression or whatever.
There will still often be ethical challenges at the end of that deployment issue,
so the question for us isn't just necessary to think about this in the narrow confines of what we might
think of as a robotic control drone or a particular use of a neural network in a biometric system.
It can be how data in Arabic rhythms are used very broadly on the web, how they're used in targeting and surveilling us.
So in the broadest sense, this was always the ambition.
And so when I was asked to put together a proposal for the Schwarzman initiative, and this was very much driven out of his own concerns,
Stephen Schwartz seems unconcerned that he was seeing a world emerge where his
particular worry was around the concern of how these systems might be deployed.
It was natural to turn to Oxford's extraordinary, extraordinary heritage in this area.
It's not hard to make the case for ethics, of course, but Oxford, you have the most extraordinary cast of characters here.
Looking through a history that includes everybody from a hacker to Paul Fletcher to Warnock and Murdoch,
these these are extraordinary figures who have shaped our thinking in the ethical and moral space and in some respects.
Of course, Mary Warnock's work also held an appeal to many because this was a person who managed to convene an entire regulatory
framework and lead on that thinking and the deployment of a technology which at the time concerned people.
The whole way in which human fertilisation and embryology science was moving,
reproductive science was moving, and that multi-stakeholder conversation,
which had serious ethical underpinnings, was one of the reasons that we found the way forward to so nuanced and interesting debate.
And one of the things I think we will see as the landscape develops here in Oxford is
this very interesting appeal to lessons learnt from fields such as medical ethics.
Many of the problems addressed have many analogies.
Some will turn out to be different, whether it is the use of human subjects or what is being done to them,
or the question of informed consent, or how access is granted to two parts of the population.
Many of these will have their equivalents in what we do.
So when we looked at the proposal as we assembled the proposal, we were surrounded really by a surfeit of riches.
This diagram just begins to reflect. This is we call this a hugely essential model.
This is not to imply, by the way, that the you're all circling. This quite not quite exist.
Existing ethics in AI Institute. This is meant to represent the the extraordinary level of input and cognate activities that
we can look at from computer science and our involvement in the Alan Turing Institute.
On the one hand, to the work that goes on in the Oxford Internet Institute with hear about some of that today
and indeed the work and the Ahero Centre for Practical Ethics Work in the Future of Humanity.
Institute work in Allied Governance, work in the Blavatnik School on policy,
a whole set of interests emerging in law around how we might think about legal restraints and applications in AI technology in medicine again,
the Wellcome Centre for Ethics,
the Oxford Martin School, Oxford Foundry for Innovation, the Big Data Institute up and in the Medical Science Division,
and information in engineering, where much of the really interesting robotics development goes on and other things too.
So it's a very rich surround. This won't even be completely comprehensive, but what's compelling about that is that you set this effort.
Within a nexus of really interesting research, and I think one of the things that Peter's looking to do is to is to is to help convene
the plurality of those conversations around the interests of the ethics in AI Institute.
Now that, of course, is as yet to be staffed, to be to be established.
But the interesting absolute essential difference of this, and some people said there are any number of ethics in AI or ethics initiatives.
Somebody counts as some extraordinary number of ethics codes the other day, and it was in the low hundreds.
Believe it or not, lots of them close similarities to one another.
And a lot of a lot of it. One suspects the various forms of virtue signalling.
Lots of it, you might suspect. Kind of copying to get into something that seems an idea whose idea of the moment.
I think the difference in the effort here is to locate this whole enterprise in the deep research of the Faculty of Philosophy,
in a tradition where the philosophical questions are primary are paramount.
Now we can divide those up in any any variety of ways and whatever set of questions you raise here, there are more,
whether it's about when you use or don't use the technology, whether it's fair,
who's responsible for it, who has access to it, does it sufficiently explain itself?
Does it varies? You go from one geography to another, it's one culture to another.
What about its utilisation of public and private goods?
And all of this just provides a sense of the depth and range of ethical questions that will arise.
And the last few minutes, let just me say something about the shape and structure of where we are.
So this all began with a group of individuals who gave of their time and energy hugely grateful
to them in a steering committee that was put together back in actually almost a year ago,
it seems extraordinary.
Just I think I was approached about a year ago and and then in the in the January of this year, we began to think about shaping the proposal.
So myself and Chris Timson, head of philosophy.
Dan Grimley, Phil Howard from the I might well use computer science to or fabricate a philosopher,
Mike Parker and Alison Noble, Mike Parker from the Welcome Institute and Allison from Information Engineering.
Actually, Allison replaced Angela McLean, who was the original originally on the committee,
as Angela chalk up the chief scientific adviser role in one of in the Ministry of Defence.
So that group had gotten together and tried to frame and shape.
The the proposal in a way that was that was going to work for for the university.
The plan ultimately is that there will be a management committee of the institute to be confirmed and it will
be cross divisional probably will mirror the kinds of things we see within things like the Blavatnik School.
The advisory board will comprise internal and external members.
They will be advisory. They will not set the agenda.
That's it's important to say, and we are at this moment about to advertise for a director for the institute.
My role is essentially to try and steward this into existence.
I think the important thing to say is of all of the activities associated with the gifts.
This is one of the first ones to to begin its work because the building,
which will be placed on the right ratcliff observatory site, will be a number of years in development.
I mean, it could be four to five years before that is actually opened. In the meantime, we would like to be undertaking this exciting research agenda.
So a director and initially two associate professors are being will be being advertised.
One of these in philosophy and one in philosophy and computer science.
There are five associate professorships ultimately to be appointed two.
So this will be a substantial centre of gravity in terms of the ability to research and teach.
And the other thing to say is that these will be at least the first to advertise will be college associations as well.
So we're trying to attract the the institute, not into the collegiate university.
There will be a number of postdoctoral research fellows or JRC appointments.
There will be a significant number of DPhil students.
We are looking to use the model of academic secondment to move people into the Institute for periods
of time where that research would help and be valuable and a significant visiting fellows programme.
So in total, we might imagine that in four years time there would be 20 or so individuals at the core of the of the institute and ultimately,
of course, looking to develop and expand with joint programmes of work to even more significant to a more significant size.
The other thing it's probably worth mentioning is that there was always the ambition that we would develop.
Various forms of curriculum content to inform our teaching, and the interesting model here is to think about the evolution of our various.
Courses where philosophy has been at their heart, whether it is the original literary human race with the greats,
as it was called the modern greats, which reflected the fact that economics have become a subject that required required study,
political science and philosophy, the scientific greats that we saw evolve philosophy, psychology,
linguistics in the 20th century, physics and philosophy, maths and philosophy, computer science and philosophy.
One of the interesting things about these is the extent to which computational thinking,
the intrusion of new ways of understanding our world has been very much at the centre.
So the question will be how we can develop content that is capable of being inserted into either masters and on the offered his undergraduate modules.
That would certainly be an ambition, and I'm certainly aware that in computer science we have a significant need for appropriate ethics courses.
It's not in and of itself. The only thing, of course, going on there is an ongoing cultural programme that will be being launched.
In fact, there is an event, A.I. and creativity.
I think on the November the 20th Wednesday that's actually also being held, that's being held at nothing in the maths institute.
And that's certainly something to look out for. One of the kind of features, again,
is that we look to really motivate the presence of this institute within the context of being human in the 21st century and how,
despite all the concerns we have, or perhaps exactly because of those concerns,
we can understand an appropriate set of balanced interventions with this technology.
As I mentioned that the site itself is not yet built and indeed the whole process
for selecting architects is in train as we speak to get that process underway.
And this finally just to say the actually, I guess, apart from a talk I gave up, so this is the single earliest manifestation of actual activity,
which all of you in this room listening to a variety of presentations as to why ethics has a
place in the consideration deliberations of of Oxford's extraordinary intellectual history.
And yeah, that really is my introduction. This is one of the first.
In fact, the first two of these are very much if you like community meetings,
town hall meetings where we're convening the interested parties together to understand what we're trying to achieve.
So that's my introduction. Thank you.