With AI, the human aspect must still come first

That includes psychology and sociology, understanding how to manage people, understanding customer needs, and most importantly, ethics

- Mint Kang

AI is one of the next big technological trends that is finding its way into all manner of applications around the world. But as entire countries jump onboard, with coding classes being made mandatory at primary school level and older workers urged to learn tech skills to stay current, industry experts are urging people and companies not to neglect the critical human aspect of this technology.

Before good AI comes good ethics

Responsible AI has to become a mainstream thing, said panelists at a recent General Assembly seminar in Singapore.

“It is not possible to separate the ethical responsibility aspect from AI,” said Sunita Kannan, ASEAN Lead for AI Advisory/Strategy and Responsible AI. She pointed out that before a company decides to bring in AI, its own morals must be transparent enough for people to understand the implications of introducing AI; the organization as a whole must recognize the need to have an ethical wall in place around whatever it is doing with the technology.

“The problems you see with AI today-bias, preferences, selecting certain types of people over others, whether in favor of majorities or minorities--those are all fundamentally human issues,” observed David Robinson, the former Chief Technology Officer of MyRepublic. “We need to put the human element together with the technology to resolve these.”