Sundar Pichai calls for regulating Artificial Intelligence but with a careful approach

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has stressed having a set of regulations to govern AI. He has also called for having global standards for the same.

Sundar Pichai has also called for having global standards for regulating AI. (REUTERS)

Of late, there has been a lot of debate on how the Artificial Intelligence (AI) should be regulated. Governments around the world have stressed that AI should be governed by a strong set of regulations. Sundar Pichai, who leads both Google and Alphabet Inc, has extended his support to these growing calls for regulating AI.

"There is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated. It is too important not to...The only question is how to approach it," Pichai wrote in an editorial piece for The Financial Express.

While the Google CEO does call for regulating AI, he suggests that a careful approach must be taken for introducing regulations in AI. In his op-ed, Pichai cautioned that tech companies cannot build new technologies and allow the "market forces decide how it will be used."

"Companies such as ours cannot just build promising new technology and let market forces decide how it will be used. It is equally incumbent on us to make sure that technology is harnessed for good and available to everyone," Pichai wrote.

While stressing on the fact that countries across the globe will have to come together to set global standards, Pichai also gave some guidelines as to what these global standards should focus on.

"Good regulatory frameworks will consider safety, explainability, fairness and accountability to ensure we develop the right tools in the right ways. Sensible regulation must also take a proportionate approach, balancing potential harms, especially in high-risk areas, with social opportunities," he wrote.

Notably, this is not the first time that the Google CEO has stressed on introducing regulations on AI. "Regulating a technology in its early days is hard, but I do think companies should self-regulate...This is why we've tried hard to articulate a set of AI principles. We may not have gotten everything right, but we thought it was important to start a conversation," he had said in an interview with The Washington Post last year.