The recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and remarkable progress have caused concerns or even alarm to some of the world’s best-known luminaries and entrepreneurs and society as a whole. We’ve seen calls in the popular press for watchdogs to keep an eye on the uses of AI technology for our own sanity and safety.

But, is that a genuine call? Do we really need AI watchdogs? The key point to bear in mind here is that a watchdog is not just a monitoring and reporting function of some sort; it should also have the authority and means to help regulate the market by ensuring standards are adhered to, and to make sure that companies that develop AI do so in a legitimate manner. This is easy to say, but not easy to execute given the extremely versatile nature of AI and its applications. AI brings to the table a lot of unknowns which make it difficult to even start thinking about establishing a standard in the first place

I had the opportunity to be in a selected cohort of 60 global AI leaders who elaborated on thorny issues regarding the state of AI today; including the AI ethics part and how governments and regulators should react to it.

The essay is available here and the whole 60 global AI leaders eBook here.