​The Guardian recently accused Microsoft of damaging its journalistic reputation by publishing an AI-generated poll on a woman’s cause of death alongside a news article (link).

Microsoft’s news aggregation service published an automated poll in close proximity to an article in The Guardian about the death of a 21-year-old polo coach who was found dead at a Sydney school.

The poll, created by an artificial intelligence program, asked, “What do you think caused the woman’s death?”. Readers were then asked to choose from three options: murder, accident, or suicide.

The poll sparked outrage from readers as well as the Guardian’s management, who argued that the incident would cause distress to the victim’s family and cause “significant reputational damage” to The Guardian and the journalists who wrote the article.

This is not the first and probably not the last incident of its kind, and it covers a larger topic that has become extremely important in recent years around the world, namely ethics of artificial intelligence – what we should and should not do with artificial intelligence and what we should allow artificial intelligence to do or not do for us and for us.

This debate brings to the fore questions as old as the world, which try to define the values ​​of humanity, what is good and what is bad, and how these values ​​should be expressed in order to communicate them to others.

Experience shows us that we cannot simply feed data to artificial intelligence systems, thinking that this is enough for them to work on their own. If we want these apps to be truly useful and autonomous tools, rather than a source of risk and liability for those who create and use them, we must also teach them our values. We must enter not only data, but also compassion, kindness and respect for others. The success of artificial intelligence in the future will depend on how well we humans can find these values ​​within ourselves and express them authentically.

The AI ​​revolution clearly presents a technological challenge for the business environment and society as a whole. But we believe that, above all, it is an opportunity to look inside ourselves and determine what exactly makes us human. And if appropriating these values ​​is what gives us human nature, how can we ask artificial intelligence to uphold them when we ourselves so often violate them?

Some consider artificial intelligence a threat, others believe that it is the most ingenious human invention, some are excited, others are wary, and many feel all this to varying degrees. Beyond all of these, and more importantly, AI is the mirror we hold up to ourselves to see who we really are. And perhaps, in our efforts to develop and improve artificial intelligence to transform it into the wise, compassionate, and benevolent tool we seek, we will be encouraged to participate in this process and bring about the same transformation in ourselves.

The article is signed by Monica Stetsescu, partner of Filip & Company