Organizations in defense of digital rights show their discomfort with a scientific collaboration agreement with the Arab country for which three members of the AI Advisory Council have already resigned
upset with him Spanish government of the leading experts in artificial intelligence (AI) of the country. This Thursday, a group of organizations in defense of digital rights has promoted a open letter in which he denounces the scientific collaboration agreement that the Executive sealed last week with a research center of United Arab Emirates (UAE). “It generates enormous concern for us,” the letter states.
The Secretary of State for Digitization and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA), under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, announced on March 21 that the Emirati scientific institute, ADIA Labhad chosen Granada as its headquarters in Europe, in which it will initially invest five million euros.
The agreement has clouded the government’s relations with the main experts in AI from the country. And it is that, in the days after the announcement of that alliance, at least three members of the Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council, a consultative body, have resigned incorporated in 2020 “to ensure safe and ethical use of AI.”
as anticipated The countrythe three members of that group of “Spanish experts of recognized international prestige” who have resigned in protest are carles sierraDirector of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC); Lorraine Jaume Palasiexpert in ethics applied to technology and founder of AlgorithmWatchand Ricardo Baeza-Yatesprofessor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and founder of the Web Sciences and Social Computing Group at Pompeu Fabra University.
Demands for greater transparency
In that open letter, the claimant entities expose the First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calvinoand the Secretary of State for Digitization and Artificial Intelligence, Carmen Artigashis concern about the long history of repression in the UAE, a country that uses surveillance technologies such as facial recognition -that will be banned in European Union– to control its citizens. That is why they ask for “a meeting with civil society” and that the public accounts be published to find out “how they are going to allocate” the five million euros of investment.
The agreement between Madrid and Abu Dhabi establishes that ADIA Lab will launch five research programs together with Spanish universities in which it will study data analysis applied to fields such as health, the environment, the digital economy, high-performance computing and the development of AI.
This reality also worries experts, who are asking for greater transparency from the authorities to “establish how ethics and the protection of human rights are going to be prioritized in the projects that are carried out.” “One of the research areas of this new center will be AI for the mitigation of climate change. However, the UAE’s economy is deeply dependent on fossil fuels and it is not clear if the investment for this collaboration comes from this economy that wreaks havoc on our climate future”, reads the text.
These organizations also show their concern about the collaboration in the project of the University of Granada, an institution in which cases of sexual harassment and mental, as well as “lack of ethical and scientific integrity of some of its highest public representatives”. Thus, they also require SEDIA and the research staff to sign a public document in which they declare their “ethical and scientific integrity” and the “planned mechanisms for evaluating the impact of human rights of investigations”.
The letter has been promoted by organizations somethingrace, Algorights, LaFede.cat and digitalfems, all of them referents in the defense of human rights inside and outside the digital environment. It is now in the phase of collection of props national and international and tomorrow Friday will be sent to the Government.