AI for good

By Daniel Shin

Despite the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), many early stage venture investors continue focusing on the technology. SoftBank is second to none, reaping a record 5 trillion yen in net profit for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2021. This was the highest of any Japanese company in history. SoftBank Vision Fund saw a huge investment gain on Coupang in the fourth quarter.

This return generates tremendous momentum for SoftBank's Vision Fund going forward. SoftBank founder, Masayoshi Son, once said, “AI will completely change the way humans live within 30 years,” and the firm has set aside $80 billion to fund Son's AI vision.

China is on the frontier of AI, making huge investments and leading the way in AI-related patents and publications. Speech and image recognition applications are already widely used as China has a vibrant market for them. China is fast in adopting such products and services in everyday life ― a huge market indeed.

The large use in China provides advantages in big data and machine learning. AI is a field that is heavily backed by the Chinese government to maintain its competitive advantage, giving a clear signal to private investors that it is worth investing in. China already has 14 AI unicorns that are valued at $1 billion or more ― a true leader of AI venture investments.

However, China's AI superpower is deepening concerns posed by cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns and privacy infringement. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI) recently published a report warning that the U.S. is drastically underprepared for the age of AI and there are also serious military implications for this.

China's offshore investments in AI are attracting mounting scrutiny. As the report noted, AI will be used in the pursuit of power; therefore, China's ambition to surpass the U.S. as the world's No. 1 AI leader within a decade is a real threat to all Americans, and maybe the world.

The successful deployment of AI to strengthen the power of governments is ironically only possible within China's unique socio-political context. Strong state power has allowed the government to exploit its exclusive data advantage and enhance state control over people through AI. AI-backed digital surveillance is a good example.

But surveillance programs are probably only one aspect of the use of AI in China. The Chinese government is counting on a booming AI industry, and legitimizes its single-party authoritarian use of AI as being in pursuit of becoming a superpower. The Chinese State Council's New Generation AI Development Plan spells out Beijing's ambitious goal of boosting the value of the country's AI industry to more than 1,000 billion yuan by 2030.

Certainly, there are also cases of AI being used for good causes. AI has helped thousands of families in China to locate their lost children thanks to very powerful and also efficient facial recognition technology that can process 100,000 cases per second. Last year, China also mobilized its mass surveillance tools from drones to CCTVs and also AI to monitor the spread of the coronavirus. AI will create so much wealth, as it also creates decent jobs for young and talented researchers and engineers.

Digital surveillance is now a part of life. The Internet is built upon the virtue of sharing, and when you're online, you have nothing to hide. Conflict between privacy and security is nothing new, however, it has become more complex and difficult with the expanded use of AI. What if there is somebody who knows you better than you know yourself?

Therefore, what we should be more concerned about is our vulnerable privacy that is continuously analyzed, updated and expanded for purposes that we don't recognize. Digital surveillance has been justified to fight COVID-19. Technology can certainly play an important role during a pandemic. However, it does not give authoritarian governments carte blanche for digital surveillance, nor a permanent measure for them to become a surveillance state. AI often tempts people in power to abandon moral responsibility.

WhatsApp recently filed a lawsuit in India against the government that is requiring social media companies to identify the first originator of information if the authorities demand it. The government could argue there has been manipulation of information on social media or harmful misinformation during a public health crisis.

Or perhaps, they just can't stand the criticism of the government's response to the crisis. WhatsApp has 2 billion active users worldwide and India has the most WhatsApp users at 390 million. If anyone wants to trace chats that are encrypted end-to-end, it simply violates the human right to privacy, not to mention the new privacy rules of WhatsApp.

AI is getting better and better. It can do good and help humanity, not harm it. Many leading tech companies have dedicated resources to building AI for good causes, and support developers who do the same. AI could generate a lot of disinformation and use a broader reach to audiences with fake news. Garbage in, garbage out? Algorithms are only as good as the input ― 2.5 quintillion bytes is how much data people create every day on the planet.

There are 18 zeros in a quintillion. The amount of content and data generated daily is too much for humans to effectively monitor, digest and absorb. AI offers a solution for that and should be used to battle negative consequences.

Therefore, some argue that all the value produced by AI has to be considered as public property. We all know that is wishful thinking, though, as people in positions of power have already gotten a taste of what AI could do for them. As a rule of thumb, there is no implicit good or bad to AI. At the end of day, it is just a tool, like a car. Who drives it is what really matters.

Daniel Shin is a venture capitalist and senior luxury fashion executive, overseeing corporate development at MCM, a German luxury brand. He also teaches at Korea University.