East meets West: The world must come together to establish ethical standards for AI

This week during my travels in China and Japan, I've had the opportunity to talk with people about the questions that artificial intelligence has triggered around the world. Whether I’m home in the United States or traveling abroad, people are not just asking how AI will improve the world, but how it will disrupt their lives. In particular, people are concerned about the ethical issues that have surfaced around this new technology.

How do we create opportunity for workers who will be displaced by AI? How will we protect people’s privacy and eliminate bias? And how will we retain control over computers designed to think and behave more like humans? 

Microsoft has developed a set of six ethical principles to guide our development of AI: fairness, reliability & safety, privacy & security, transparency and responsibility. It's a start, but it's not the entire answer.

AI is a journey that the entire world is on. We need to have a global conversation about ethics. A conversation that brings together the great philosophical and ethical traditions from the East and the West. A discussion where Socrates meets Confucius. It's a conversation we need if we are to shape a future where ethical principles -- and eventually a new generation of laws -- guide the development and usage of AI.