Today I was attending the highly interesting and utterly necessary event “Responsible AI”, a two-day Forum on the socially responsible development of Artificial Intelligence organized by Université de Montréal. The prolific exchange of knowledge, wisdom and opinions around AI and the profound social and ethical responsibilities that come with it emphasizes Montreal’s ambition and seriousness to become a leading hub of AI.

The unknown variables of the mid- and long-term impact of AI on job security, privacy, justice, social equality and ecology are so far reaching that questions during the first day of the forum largely outnumbered  answers - which to me is a healthy sign of a constructive dialogue. Being able to ask the right question is more valuable than offering an easy answer that has not been thought to the end.

So this is one of the many questions I wrote into my notebook while listening to leading AI scientists : Is capitalism the wrong Operating System for Artificial Intelligence? While we get assured during every press conference by a tech CEO that their goal is to make life better, connect the world, wipe out poverty and safe the planet, it is easy to forget that all leading AI multinationals are stock quoted companies. In a value proposition world driven by quarterly reporting and C-level compensation mostly linked to short term profits, corporate social responsibility is regularly perceived as a profit decreasing waste of shareholder’s investment. If we are serious about AI and if we have the collective capacity of learning from self learning algorithms, we should consider in each AI algorithm a baked-in, triple bottom line approach that inherently pursues ecological, social and economic objectives. Or do you think we can rely on capitalism as the adequate OS for AI?