In the new edition of the prestigious AI Index Report, the initiative of the Pontifical Academy for Life receives international recognition

It received the most attention: This is the result that the Rome Call for AI Ethics obtained globally, as it was identified as one of the five most covered news topics of 2020 in the ethical use of AI technologies, according to the AI Index Report,published in March 2021. This report is an influential yearly publication of the HAI, the Institute for Human-Centered AI of Stanford University.

This recognition values the novelty and the impact of a call that was launched to promote a sense of shared responsibility among organizations, governments, institutions, tech companies and the society as a whole for a future that sees digital innovation and technological progress at the service of humankind. And the fact that one of the most renowned universities in the world confirmed that is proof of the validity of the call’s proposal and the urgency to discuss this theme.

The AI Index Reportis a large document that outlines, collects, analyses and presents AI-related data every year, with the aim to provide impartial, rigorously controlled, and international data to politicians, researchers, executives, journalists and the general public with a view to develop, reflect on and expand the knowledge of the complex AI reality.

The fifth chapter of the 2021 edition analyses the global media coverage of the ethical use of artificial intelligence. This section examined 60,000 English-language news sources and over 500,000 blogsin2020. Among them, 3,047 articles on AI technologies contained words such as “human rights”, “human values”, “responsibility”, “human control”, “fairness”, “discrimination”, or “nondiscrimination”, “transparency”, “explainability”, “safety”, “accountability” and “privacy”.

The data obtained enabled the identification of the five most covered news topics, and specifically:

• The release of the European Commission’s white paper on AI,
• Google’s dismissal of ethics researcher TimnitGebru,
• The AI Ethics committee formed by the United Nations,
• The Vatican’s AI ethics plan (the Rome Call),
• IBM exiting the facial-recognition business.

This recognition honours an endeavour that shall continue to grow, so that the ethical debate on AIand the need to protect the rights and dignity of every human being are supported world-wide.