The company has backed down on its proposal to address school shootings, but the damage was already done.
Axon’s is the latest external AI ethics board to come in conflict with its associated tech company. Google famously convened and disbanded an AI ethics advisory group inin 2019. These panels often operate without clear structure beyond asking members to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and companies can use them for “virtue signaling” rather than substantive input, says Cortnie Abercrombie, founder of the nonprofit AI Truth.
In Axon’s case, multiple AI Ethics Board members who spoke with WIRED said that the company did have a record of listening to their suggestions, including in anot to deploy facial recognition on body cameras. That made the sudden Taser-drone announcement all the more jarring. There’s usually conflict in companies between people who understand a technology’s risks and limitations and those who want to make products and profits, says Wael AbdAlmageed, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California who resigned from the Axon AI Ethics Board. If companies like Axon want to take AI ethics seriously, he says, the role of these boards cannot be advisory anymore.
“If the AI Ethics Board says this technology is problematic and the company should not develop products, then they shouldn’t. I know it’s a difficult proposition, but I really think this is how it has to be done,” he says. “We’ve seenThe AI Ethics Board tried to persuade Axon that it should be responsive to the communities affected by its products, Friedman says, rather than the police who buy them.
Four members of the AI Ethics Board didn’t sign the resignation letter. They include former Seattle police chief Carmen Best, former Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck, and former California Highway Patrol commissioner Warren Stanley.
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