The current discourse on AI and ethics is both broad and rich, but there are some structural and fundamental limitations. A recent paper published in Scientific Reports suggest that artificial intelligence is better described as an ecosystem of socio-technical systems where some of the characteristics we should ask of a responsible ecosystem of intelligent systems include being sensitive to ethical and social questions, and promoting the use of technology that support the wellbeing of both humans and our environment.
HBP Scientific Director Katrin Amunts presented the Human Brain Project, its digital multilevel brain atlas and the EBRAINS RI at the Copernicus Science Festival in Krakow. After her talk, the scientist addressed the audience's questions in a discussion format under the theme “Brains exploring brains At what stage of development is neuroscience today?”, together with Polish neuroscientists Rafał Czajkowski and Marcin Szwed.
HBP researchers are simulating the brain with virtual models, an approach which is yielding novel insights into the organ’s function. These advanced technologies have enabled powerful new approaches in clinical neuroscience. Now, HBP scientists are modelling multiple scales at the same time.
A recent special issue of the American Journal of Bioethics – Neuroscience offers analyses of different ethical issues raised by research on consciousness. Contributions from international scholars in the field address challenges ranging from moral interpretations, technological manipulations, artificial replications, pharmacological alternations and the potential to attribute consciousness to engineered brain cells.
The Human Brain Project has developed an atlas of the human brain with unprecedented detail and has made it freely available for everyone to browse online on the EBRAINS platform.
The final HBP summit recently concluded in Marseille, France.
In a new study in Nature Machine Intelligence*, researchers Bojian Yin and Sander Bohté from the HBP partner Dutch National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) demonstrate a significant step towards artificial intelligence that can be used in local devices like smartphones and in VR-like applications, while protecting privacy. They show how brain-like neurons combined with novel learning methods enable training fast and energy-efficient spiking neural networks on a large scale. Potential applications range from wearable AI to speech recognition and Augmented Reality.
Attention to ethical and societal issues have been an important and integral part of the Human Brain Project. From the very beginning in 2013 until today. Over the years, researchers from the social sciences and the humanities have developed governance structures and mechanisms to integrate responsible research and innovation (RRI) practices across the project. But RRI and ethical and philosophical reflection has also been an important part of the research in the Human Brain Project. Where the ethics & society team has contributed with conceptual and empirical methods to identify, reflect, and manage the ethical and social issues raised by …
Impact assessments can help identify both positive and negative impacts at an early stage of development. It is very likely that this will become an integral part of structures designed address the ethical and social issues. The first ever systematic review of AI impact assessment was just published in Artificial Intelligence Review, providing the basis for the next step for actors who want to ensure that impact assessments are fit-for-purpose. The authors also develop a generic model that can help guide their decision.
