‘I do not think ethical surveillance can exist’: Rumman Chowdhury on accountability in AI

One of the leading thinkers on artificial intelligence discusses responsibility, moral outsourcing' and bridging the gap between people and technology

Rumman Chowdhury often has trouble sleeping, but, to her, this is not a problem that requires solving. She has what she calls 2am brain", a different sort of brain from her day-to-day brain, and the one she relies on for especially urgent or difficult problems. Ideas, even small-scale ones, require care and attention, she says, along with a kind of alchemic intuition. It's just like baking," she says. You can't force it, you can't turn the temperature up, you can't make it go faster. It will take however long it takes. And when it's done baking, it will present itself."

It was Chowdhury's 2am brain that first coined the phrase moral outsourcing" for a concept that now, as one of the leading thinkers on artificial intelligence, has become a key point in how she considers accountability and governance when it comes to the potentially revolutionary impact of AI.