Building bias into AI is my biggest concern, says UAE minister

Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, the UAE’s Minister of State for Public Education and Advanced Technology and Chairwoman of the UAE Space Agency and the UAE Council of Scientists, said building bias into artificial intelligence (AI) is her biggest concern and called for governing the framework to develop AI systems.

While speaking during an event organised by The Arab Gulf States Institute, she said AI, in general, is a tool that firms don't develop for the sake of it but for the benefit of either solving a problem, creating a new opportunity, overcoming a challenge and so on.

“In terms of potential for what AI can do, like any tool, if it's used in the right place, you realise the potential of it. If it's used in the wrong place at the wrong time, then you don't necessarily realise the potential of it,” Al Amiri said in a reply to a question.

“My biggest personal concern is building bias into AI. That will make him not inclusive, skewed in some areas, and then create a massive ripple effect. One area that is not governed but needs to be governed is sort of a framework on how you develop those AI systems, rather than how you govern,” she said.

During the World Government Summit earlier this month, the UAE minister also spoke about how technology has some kind of bias. “We see that today even the much-lauded ChatGPT is a biased system. It does have constructs that have been put into it that are considered biased and not all-inclusive,” she said.

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