NXP Will Bring AI Ethics To The Empowered Edge

The number of smart connected devices in our lives is expected to nearly double between now and 2025, to 50 billion, and only continue to increase from there. We'll find ourselves relying more and more on them to use AI to anticipate our needs and automate how we consume, pay, move, work, and interact.

These devices should behave “ethically,” and we need to be able to trust them. By adhering to strict rules on how we design, utilize and operate our AI, we can create a trust foundation for how we – the society – and AI systems interact with each other.

As innovators in AI, NXP is committed to applying ethical principles. That's why today we introduced our AI Ethics initiative and, in a new whitepaper entitled The Morals of Algorithms we detailed a comprehensive framework for AI principles, which underscores our commitment to the ethical development of AI components and systems that operate transparently, fairly, and safely and securely, while giving people control over their privacy.

NXP’s portfolio includes chips optimized for machine learning and AI applications in a growing number of devices "at the edge" of networks, where people work and live, enabling things we use every day to sense their environments, and then interpret, analyze, and act in real time on the data collected.

That means we enable thermostats, security systems, car sensors, robots and industrial automation, and other devices to take on more responsibilities in our lives.

NXP wants those devices at the edge to act ethically so that people can comfortably rely on them and, thereby, realize the benefits of smart technology. We want to build ethics into the chips we make and the processes they allow. 

We recognize this is a big challenge since we'll be charting new ground. But an innovation-minded spirit is core to who we are as NXP.

There is robust conversation and debate underway about AI ethics, and a somewhat emergent consensus among leading academic institutions, research organizations and pioneer technology firms on its core qualities from which we've drawn our initiative's five principles: Non-Maleficence, Human Autonomy, Explicability, Continued Attention & Vigilance, and Privacy and Security by Design.

There is emerging precedent for how these principles inform research, project design, process flow, and individual behavior. Our challenge as NXP is to create an operational framework that not only makes our AI Ethics a component for how we as humans make purposeful decisions, but also an aspect of our unintentional, even unconscious biases and intents.

We plan to develop that "how" in close collaboration with our engineering and customer-facing teams around the world, many of whom provided inputs and insights to the design of the initiative. Ultimately, ethics originate from people and from society, and maintaining that framework is vital. For NXP to deliver on our principles for our customers—and their consumers—our products must adhere to this same framework. 

You are invited to join us on this journey. Please download our whitepaper. We believe it is the start of something that will make a positive difference in all of our lives.