AI and E-Commerce: Ethical Conflicts《人工智能與電子商貿：倫理對弈》

The Seminar named “AI and E-Commerce: Ethical Conflicts《人工智能與電子商貿：倫理對弈》” was co-organized by Hong Kong Top 10 e-Commerce Club (HKTTECC) and Research Centre for Sustainable Hong Kong (CSHK), CityU on 10^th April 2019.  I met HKSQ member Mr. Derek Kung (Foundering member, HKTTECC) and took photo for memory.

I also took a photo with Dr. Jason Chan. We are exco member of CityU Eminence Society.

In the beginning, Prof. Linda Chelan Li (Director, CSHK, CityU) gave welcome speech. She briefed the idea of setup CSHK that aimed to apply more collective efforts to systematically address the challenges of socio-economic-environmental sustainability for the betterment of Hong Kong and the Region.

Ms. Ip (Chairlady of HKTTECC) gave opening speech and thanked all guest speakers and supporting organizations.

Group photo taken.

The first speaker was Ms. Gilly Wong (Chief Executive, Consumer Council) and her topic named “AI and E-Commerce: Ethical Conflicts”. Firstly, she selected two definition of AI that one from Marvin Minsky (AI pioneer) and the other from Yves Demazean (CNRS, France).  She found that two words were important and they were Intelligence and Human Behavior.  

Ms. Gilly Wong said that a balance of innovation with regulations, in a world of uncertain / un-precedent speed and scale of transition. This balance aimed to reduce the risk and increase the opportunity in four areas including Government, Business, Science and Public.  

Then she briefed HK Government invested $10billion to establish two innovative clusters included Health@InnoHK and AIR@InnoHK. It also included to joinly develop a demonstration zone for innovation in Greater Bay Area.

After that Ms. Gilly Wong discussed the topic on the view of consumer rights on AI.  She questioned “Can an average consumer feel the Change? Like the change? Adapt to the Change?” And then she mentioned 8 consumer rights below.

1.      The right to satisfaction of basic needs

2.      The right to safety

3.      The right to be informed

4.      The right to choose

5.      The right to be heard

6.      The right to redress

7.      The right to consumer education

8.      The right to a healthy and sustainable environment

During discussed the right to choose, “Do AI increase or reduce consumer choice?” Ms. Wong said.  Mr. Derek Kung (Foundering member, HKTTECC) said AI algorithm only showed things what you like. Later then your choice was limited.  Then Ms. Wong asked how to sustain the competition in a fair marketplace especially when SMEs face even more acute shortage of skilled IT talents, access to data and capital?  Because it is almost 90% share of economy is from SMEs in Hong Kong.  Privacy is another issue. 

After that Ms. Gilly Wong briefed the OECD guidelines for AI and the Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI.  OECD recommendations identify five principles for responsible stewardship of trustworthy AI, namely: inclusive and sustainable growth and well-being, human-centred values and fairness, transparency and explainability, robustness and safety, and accountability.

EU 4 ethical principles are:

1.      Respect for human

2.      Autonomy

3.      Prevention of harm

4.      Fairness and Explicability

EU 7 Key requirements are:

1.      Human agency and oversight

2.      Technical robustness and safety

3.      Privacy and data governance

4.      Transparency

5.      Diversity, non-discrimination and fairness

6.      Environmental and societal well-being

7.      Accountability

Finally, Ms. Wong quoted Garry Kasparov (Former World Chess Champion) statement as conclusion that “Powerful autonomous machines must reflect human morality and that the wealth, productivity, and safety generated by AI must be shared across the society”.

The second speaker was Mr. Kenny Lai (Solution Architect, Alibaba Cloud) and his topic entitled “Big Data Analytics on Cloud”.  Firstly, he overviewed Alibaba Cloud business which only 4% in market share in the world. (Amazon over 50% !)

Then Mr. Lai briefed the application of AI and Big Data including Intelligent E-commerce, Alime, Tmall Genie, City Brain and Autonomous Driving.  He also mentioned their breakthrough of the technology barrier of 5K Nodes in Aug 2013.  He explained how much data can a 5K cluster process that he used Yahoo as example that they achieved 4K Nodes upto 16PB of raw disk.  

Finally, Mr. Kenny Lai explained the demographic Data Analytics on Cloud included three key stages below:

1.      Collect – Check if Personally Identifying Information (PII) is collected, de-identify the data before processing on cloud

2.      Process – Ensure Data upload to cloud contain non-identifiable data. If the data is collected on Cloud, use different technique (like tokenization one way hash, grouping) to make it not identifiable

3.      Model – The Result machine learning model contain the generalized representation of the trend or features.  It can be deployed online/offline to provide classification, reasoning or other means without expose the individual private data.

The third speaker was Dr. Jason Chan (Head of IT, PolyU CPCE; Exco member of CityU Eminence Society) and his topic about Big Data Analytics and AI.

Firstly, he demonstrated a video about his study on CE election data analytics in social media.  

He said Hong Kong population and market were small for big data. However, data could be separated into micro data that one person could have 200 attributes and then generated huge data. Big data has one more dimension - “TIME”.  

And then he demonstrated another interview about AI application in “科技Band房”.

Dr. Jason Chan said if you could like to participate into AI or alive under AI Era, you had better study human-human contract things such as psychology and counselling.

After that he introduced “Systems and Methods for Creating Study Plan via AI” which was discovered by his son Mr. Ocean Chan.

At the end, he concluded “Everything is connected.” The separated six circle could combined to form the eye in the first slide of this presentation. 

The last part Q&A was facilitated by Mr. Ho-mum Chan (Associate Professor, CityU).  They discussed privacy and Mr. Ho-mum Chan used mathematics as example that we knew X+Y=3 from one source.  X and Y is unknown and under protected.  However, if we got the equation X-Y=1 from another source. X and Y is no longer shielded.  Finally, the balance of risk and society efficiency was discussed.  They concluded AI / Mobile Apps were tools, professional should take the accountability. 

Reference:

CityU CSHK - https://www.cityu.edu.hk/cshk/

HKTTECC - https://www.hkttecc.com/

CityU AI related activities:

20190322: CityU President's Lecture series - Big Data Analysis & AI: Opportunities & Challenges - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/03/cityu-presidents-lecture-series-big.html

20190227: CityU Seminar on Design of Accident Prevention System for LWR using ANN and HS Simulator - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/02/cityu-seminar-on-design-of-accident.html

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20181227: CityU Distinguished Lecture - How to Make an Artificial Vision System Smart? - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2018/12/cityu-distinguished-lecture-how-to-make.html

20181114: CityU the 1st Workshop on Financial Data Analysis - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2018/11/cityu-1st-workshop-on-financial-data.html