Yi Zeng: promoting good governance of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has developed quickly in recent years, with applications expanding from automatic driving and smart manufacturing to personal healthcare and algorithm-based social media utilization. During the COVID-19 pandemic, AI has played an essential role in identifying suspected infections, ensuring epidemic surveillance and quickening drug screening. However, many questions accompanied AI’s development. How to protect citizens’ privacy and national information security? What measures can help AI learn and practice good human behaviors and avoid unethical use of AI technologies? To answer these questions, Nation Science Review (NSR) interviewed Yi Zeng, Professor and Deputy Director at the Research Center for Brain-inspired Artificial Intelligence at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He is a board member for the National Governance Committee of Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence affiliated to the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST). Zeng is also in AI ethics expert groups at the World Health Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He jointly led the drafting of Beijing AI Principles (2019) and the National Governance Principles of New Generation AI of China (GPNGAI, 2019).