The Rise of Ethical Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence or AI is evolving at a rapid pace and starting to impact every aspect of our lives. While AI brings great benefits, it also poses some challenges if not developed responsibly. One company working to ensure trustworthy and beneficial development of AI is Holistic AI, a French startup that takes a comprehensive “holistic” approach.
What is Holistic AI?
Holistic AI was founded in 2022 with a mission to build AI technologies that are not just advanced, but also consider social good, fairness and environmental sustainability. Their vision is to make sure AI systems can be trusted to benefit humanity.
To achieve this, Holistic AI develops different products like their AI Governance Platform. This platform helps large companies manage and monitor all their AI systems from one place. It checks if the AI is working as intended, treats all users fairly and respects their privacy. Other products like AI Safeguard and AI Tracker help companies reduce risks from AI. AI Audits allow companies to prove their AI works properly and complies with regulations.
Founded by AI researchers Adriano Koshiyama and Emre Kazim, Holistic AI received $220 million in startup funding. This shows their holistic approach focusing on ethics is important for businesses and investors too.
Why a Holistic Approach is Needed?
A holistic approach considers how AI affects all aspects of our world. If developed narrowly, AI could have unintended consequences. For example, an educational AI tutoring system may focus only on helping students get high exam scores. But it may do this by reinforcing unfair biases in society instead of helping all students equally.
A holistic approach spots such risks. It makes sure the AI system does not just look at exam results, but also considers how it impacts students’ well-being, life opportunities and brings out their unique talents. Only then can AI truly be beneficial.
Defining AI Responsibly
To ensure responsible development, we must first understand what exactly “Artificial Intelligence” is. Unfortunately, there is no consensus on its definition. Different organizations define it differently based on their priorities:
- The OECD focuses on systems that can perform tasks requiring human intelligence like planning. But it misses narrower applications.
- The EU defines AI broadly as systems displaying intelligent behavior. But this could include simple programs, blurring what needs close oversight.
- Canada recognizes both narrow and general AI, but does not consider socio-economic impacts in its definition.
Holistic AI believes no single definition can capture AI’s complexity. Instead of narrow technical or functional definitions, they advocate a comprehensive definition covering AI’s diverse applications and their wide-ranging human, economic and environmental impacts. Only then can we regulate and guide AI development responsibly.
Holistic AI Announces $220 Million in Initial Funding
In May 2024, Holistic AI announced that it had raised $220 million in an initial funding round led by several billionaire investors and venture capital firms. The startup, which announced it had rebranded and was now called H, said it planned to use the funds to expand its team of AI researchers and engineers while continuing to develop its technology.
Some of the notable investors participating in the round included Aglaé Ventures, the fund backed by French billionaire Bernard Arnault. Former Google CEO and Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt also contributed. Other investors included Xavier Niel, Yuri Milner, Accel Partners, Amazon, Samsung, and UiPath.
UiPath, a leading robotic process automation software company, invested $32.5 million of the total funding. According to a company filing, its investment was split between equity and convertible debt. H indicated it would work with strategic partners like UiPath on commercial partnerships, market access, and computing resources going forward.
The large Series A round, which valued H at over $1 billion, signaled strong investor interest and confidence in the company’s holistic approach to developing advanced AI technologies. With expertise from former Google DeepMind researchers, H aims to create AI capable of reasoning, planning, and completing complex tasks in a trustworthy and beneficial manner. The new funding provides resources for H to significantly expand its operations and make progress toward this ambitious technical and social vision.
The Future of Holistic AI
As AI becomes even more advanced with technologies like brain-like neural networks, the need for holistic and responsible development will rise. Holistic AI aims to ensure this through continuous improvements to their AI Governance Platform.
Their vision is to assess AI systems on multiple aspects like efficacy, fairness, privacy, safety and explainability. This comprehensive evaluation approach could help organizations across sectors like automotive, healthcare and finance develop advanced AI safely.
Holistic AI is also sharing their expertise through research papers, events and online resources. They are actively working to establish international AI governance standards. If successful, they may shape how advanced AI is defined and developed globally with human and planetary well-being as the priority.
In conclusion, as AI progresses, taking a holistic view considering all impacts will be crucial. Companies like Holistic AI working to develop AI responsibly could play an important role in realizing benefits of new technologies, while avoiding potential downsides. The holistic approach prioritizing people and planet over narrow functional or economic goals is what makes AI trustworthy to positively transform our future.