Google could soon provide ethics service to companies building AI solutions

Google could soon offer an ethics consultation service to companies building Artificial Technology solutions. According to a report in Wired, the search giant may soon offer the service to companies developing AI projects. The report suggests that Google might launch the service before the end of 2020 and initially, it would offer only advice on tasks such as spotting racial bias or creating guidelines to govern the AI projects. The American multinational may in the future also offer other services such as audits of AI systems, etc. 

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Google's own ethics-based controversies

Google's plan to offer ethics advice to companies building AI solutions is being mocked even before it could be officially launched and there is a reason for that. Google doesn't have a good track record when it comes to the company's own ethics policy as it has been mired in several controversies in the past few years.

In 2015, the company had to apologise for a technical glitch in its Photos app that identified Black people as gorillas. In 2018, the company face backlash from its own employees after agreeing to develop surveillance software for the US defence department. 

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The California-based company in 2018 reportedly tested a secret search engine it had developed for China, an authoritarian country where content is censored and monitored by the State. Company's CEO Sundar Pichai had even testified for the same in the US Congress, where he admitted that Google was working on a search engine for China.

Following these controversies, the company issued a set of ethical principal for the use of its AI. Big companies pay Google for cloud computing services and as per reports some of them are already taking ethical help for the firm, which may have possibly prompted the Alphabet Inc-owned to dive into it. 

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