Ethics and Society Newsletter #5: Hugging Face Goes To Washington and Other Summer 2023 Musings

One of the most important things to know about “ethics” in AI is that it has to do with values. Ethics doesn’t tell you what’s right or wrong, it provides a vocabulary of values – transparency, safety, justice – and frameworks to prioritize among them. This summer, we were able to take our understanding of values in AI to legislators in the E.U., U.K., and U.S., to help shape the future of AI regulation. This is where ethics shines: helping carve out a path forward when laws are not yet in place.

In keeping with Hugging Face’s core values of openness and accountability, we are sharing a collection of what we’ve said and done here. This includes our CEO Clem’s testimony to U.S. Congress and statements at the U.S. Senate AI Insight Forum; our advice on the E.U. AI Act; our comments to the NTIA on AI Accountability; and our Chief Ethics Scientist Meg’s comments to the Democratic Caucus. Common to many of these discussions were questions about why openness in AI can be beneficial, and we share a collection of our answers to this question here.

In keeping with our core value of democratization, we have also spent a lot of time speaking publicly, and have been privileged to speak with journalists in order to help explain what’s happening in the world of AI right now. This includes:

Some of our talks released this summer include Giada’s TED presentation on whether “ethical” generative AI is possible (the automatic English translation subtitles are great!); Yacine’s presentations on Ethics in Tech at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and Responsible Openness at the Workshop on Responsible and Open Foundation Models; Katie’s chat about generative AI in health; and Meg’s presentation for London Data Week on Building Better AI in the Open.

Thank you for reading!

-- Meg, on behalf of the Ethics & Society regulars at Hugging Face