Last month, the University of the Philippines started to draft guidelines on responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI), one of the first such efforts by an academic institution.
Dr. John-rob Bantang, director of UP’s Computational Science Research Center, said the policies are being drawn up by the university should be “broad enough to cover all possible AI instances, not just ChatGPT or any other specific application… and it should also be practical enough that people would be able to recognize it and relate to it.”
“It is very critical that UP does its role as the national university in helping the country tread along this new environment,” he added.
UP Professor Benjamin Vallejo, who teaches a class that trains his students to appreciate the ethics behind AI and its feasibility in society, hopes that their contributions to the guidelines would be included.
The foremost concern, they said, is that AI creators and users should be trained in ethics to help them discern harmful AI such as deepfakes, or manipulated images or recordings misrepresenting real people. They also urged UP to consider introducing a risk management framework that takes into account data privacy as well as identity theft related to AI apps.
Furthermore, the university should adopt a code of practice on AI that lists the rights and obligations of creators and users. They are hopeful this may even be adopted by government, civil society, and the private or business sector.
In crafting policies on AI use, UP experts sought to establish basic definitions to better understand the phenomenon.
Bantang also emphasized another overlooked facet, which is that people had already been using AI for a much longer time, from robots in factory assembly lines to traffic navigation apps like Waze. “People are very concerned and a lot are anxious about it, but the same thing has happened ever since the Industrial Revolution,” he said.
Artificial intelligence is fast becoming a part of daily life, and with its rapid development and adoption comes the need for humanity to come up with the guidelines and regulations that can ensure it is used for the common good and prevent misuse and abuse, which could have serious consequences. That is now the job of academics in the private sector and policymakers in government, one that they must take seriously and act with dispatch as our world continues to grapple with game changing advances in technology.*
