Canada’s federal privacy commissioner has co-sponsored an international declaration calling for ethical data collection and stewardship principles to be established to govern the research and development of artificial intelligence (AI).
Dubbed the Declaration on Ethics and Data Protection in Artificial Intelligence, the document was penned by France’s, the E.U.’s and Italy’s equivalents to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) — as well as 13 other international privacy and data protection offices, including Quebec’s Commission d’accès à l’information — and was signed at the 40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in Brussels, Belgium.
The six-page declaration enumerates six primary objectives, with a total of 23 subcategories, ultimately calling for “common governance principles on artificial intelligence to be established, fostering concerted international efforts in this field, in order to ensure that its development and use take place in accordance with ethics and human values, and respect human dignity.”
Listed among the Declaration’s objectives are general statement encouraging the respectful collection of user data, as well as the establishment of an “ethics by design” approach that ensures AI is built with the principles of privacy by default and privacy by design.
“Technology must serve humankind, that is all individuals,” said Daniel Therrien, Canada’s privacy commissioner, in a November 21st, 2018 OPC media release.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that the digitization of so much of our lives is reshaping humanity. If we are not careful, it will be reshaped in ways that do not accord with our most fundamental rights and values.”
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