Ethics by design: Canada adopts AI ethics and data protection declaration

While lauding the significant benefits that AI systems could offer for users and society in general, the preamble to the declaration acknowledged that some data sets used to train machine learning-based and artificial intelligence systems have been found to contain inherent bias resulting in decisions that can unfairly discriminate against certain individuals or groups.  

The preamble also noted that the decisions of AI systems decisions that cannot be explained also raise fundamental questions of accountability, not only for privacy and data protection law but also for liability in the event of errors and harm to individuals. Given ongoing concerns about the possible malicious use of AI and related risks to privacy and data protection, the IDPPC felt it necessary to urge the adoption of international standards and created the declaration to endorse some key “guiding principles” as its core values to preserve human rights in the development of AI. 

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