There are many potential benefits to the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, including the reduction of economic inefficiencies and increase in high-skilled jobs. There are also significant risks that must be managed — through both technical design and policy-making instruments— to maximize these benefits for any given society while protecting its important ethical values.

Technical solutions alone are insufficient to ensure ethics permeate AI systems design absent legally binding requirements and appropriate economic incentives. While legislation can incentivize competition in service of compliance, it is also limited by territorial and time-based constraints, which raises the importance of using alternative policy-making instruments and certification-based standards.

Human-centric AI governance will require identifying the appropriate set of tools to address ethical concerns raised by risk-benefit assessments on the use of AI.

Report by the World Economic Forum