by Zachy Hennessey
Experts in the Justice Ministry and throughout the government are working to find the right balance between allowing innovation and protecting the public.
Artificial intelligence is one of the foremost fields of technology currently being explored, and while there is no reasonable doubt that the advancement of the technology will greatly benefit humanity, the rampant innovation taking place comes with a host of ethical, humanitarian and legal concerns.
AI is going through its Wild West era, and Israeli regulators are working to promote the fledgling technology’s development while creating sensible safeguards to protect citizens from the potential misuse of its enormous power.
Dr. Yuval Roitman, senior director of the regulation division at the Justice Ministry, explained why there is such a pressing need for AI regulation.
“We understand that AI is here, and it’s going to be more and more substantial in the work of the Israeli government and Israeli economy, on the one hand,” he said, “and on the other hand, we have a very important AI sector within the private sector,” he said. “We want to do two things: to promote the industry and to protect our citizens.”
As such, Israel’s government now features a host of teams that were created in order to establish a national AI strategy. These teams are responsible for topics such as the use of AI within the government, data privacy, the promotion of innovation in the regulation of AI and ethics in relation to it.
Also pertinent is a government team developing regulations for frameworks called “sandboxes,” which are limited ecosystems where developers can experiment with technology in a controlled manner. Roitman explained that the ministry is promoting a general sandbox act “so we won’t have to go to the Knesset for every situation that we want to allow a sandbox.” This will allow developers to experiment much more freely, which will be greatly relevant to the advancement of artificial intelligence.
ANOTHER
KEY player in Israel’s AI regulation is a task force dedicated to
issues of law and technology. One of its focuses, understandably, has
been the regulation of artificial intelligence.
IT SHOULD BE noted that in the training process in the core technology areas, such as chip design, algorithms, software, artificial intelligence, and cyber, is long – there are no shortcuts. (credit: HADAS PARUSH/FLASH90)
Cedric Sabbah, the Justice Ministry’s director of emerging technologies and a main contributor to the task force’s operations, explained that the international conversation on AI regulation started a few years ago upon the release of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Recommendation on AI, which provided an intergovernmental standard for AI policies.
“In the OECD’s text, you can really see the tension that there was between wishing to enable innovation and allow for all the benefits of AI to be reaped in an innovation friendly ecosystem, and the apprehensions about what a future of AI holds,” said Sabbah.
“The way they framed it was that in order for society to truly reap the benefits of AI innovation, society at large needs to have trust that the products that are being put out there are useful and will not come to hurt them,” he said, pointing out that Israel was “instrumental to its development along with other OECD countries, and here at the Justice Ministry, we were very much part of it.”
Since the intergovernmental economic organization sparked the global AI conversation, Israel has joined several international initiatives created to develop standardized AI regulation such as the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) and the Ad-hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI), which is run by the Council of Europe – the latter of which Israel joined as an observer state.
“This means that we have a voice at the table, but at the same time, we don’t have a vote,” said Sabbah. “So we can influence indirectly, we can make our voice heard, we can suggest drafting proposals and policy proposals, and we’re still taken into consideration when they try to look at the overall direction that people are supporting.”
DESPITE
ISRAEL’S position in these international forums, it still has a vested
interest in ensuring that the global standards being developed don’t
unduly hamper innovation, which is a key facet of the country’s DNA.
“For us, it’s a big deal because so much of our industry is hi-tech, and so much of that is AI innovations, so we really do want to make sure that our interests are being heard,” Sabbah said.
On that note, he elaborated on one of the current hot-button topics in AI regulation: explainability. At its core, the issue is that as a technology becomes more advanced, it becomes more opaque to those who use it. This relationship creates a potential threat, as that opacity could veil instances of discrimination, fraud or other nefarious activities.
In response to this, there is a push from some governments to require that upon request, any decision made by an AI can be dissected and explained.
A constant availability of explainability, however, can negatively impact a system’s effectiveness. Furthermore, the disclosure of an algorithm’s operations could potentially damage a company’s intellectual property.
As Sabbah put it, “If you make it explainable, there’s a risk for companies that they’re going to have to disclose the secret sauce.”
These potentially damaging regulatory tools therefore stand to harm innovation-focused countries like Israel.
“We need to think about what it actually means if we create an international law obligation to have explainability, because it could come at the expense of protecting companies’ legitimate IP,” he said.
According to Tal Werner-Kling, senior director of international technology law at the Justice Ministry, being a party to international artificial intelligence initiatives like CAHAI grants a unique opportunity to create a brand new set of laws for a field that has never been touched before.
“It’s a rare chance, because in so many fields of law, the rules are there and you have to join and comply or decide not to join and pay the price,” Werner-Kling said.
“Right now we have an opportunity to voice an opinion, and try to find and recruit other parties who may not even realize that they have similar interests,” she said. “I think that’s a very important moment in time to be in the creation of law.”
Zachy Hennessey
Source: https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-700564
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