Less than one in a hundred job offers in the field of AI take ethics into account. Despite the ethical concerns raised by artificial intelligence, this dimension is almost absent from the skills sought by employers recruiting in AI professions, notes the OECD in a report published this Monday.
On positions that involve “developing and adapting AI systems”, employers “rarely mention the ethics” necessary for decision-making, argues the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. To arrive at this conclusion, the OECD tested the presence of keywords associated with “AI ethics”, “trustworthy AI”, “responsible AI” or “ethical AI » in online job offers in around fifteen countries.
“Ethics is not prioritized”
In the overwhelming majority of states studied, “less than 1% of all job offers” related to AI contained words belonging to the lexical field of ethics in 2022. New Zealand is the most advanced in this area, but barely 1.63% of its AI-related job offers in 2022 included one of these keywords. Vacancies related to AI in France (0.13%) and Belgium (0.04%) even more rarely mention the ethical dimension.
These figures suggest that “despite strong commitments from States and intentions stated by companies specializing in the development of AI, ethics are not yet prioritized in recruitment decisions”, unlike skills. techniques for example, deplores the OECD. The report comes three days after the end of a global summit on artificial intelligence security.
Demand for skills related to this technology remains modest
On this occasion, China, the United States, the European Union and around twenty countries agreed on the “urgent need to understand and collectively manage the potential risks” of AI, so as to “guarantee that AI is developed and deployed in a safe and responsible manner.
Generative AI, capable of producing text, sounds or images on a simple request in a handful of seconds, has made exponential progress in recent years, which gives hope for great progress in medicine in particular, but also raises fears of an explosion in disinformation, massive job losses and the theft of intellectual property. Despite the immense disruption promised by AI, demand for skills linked to this technology remains modest, according to the OECD. “On average”, among the fourteen countries studied, “the proportion of online job offers requiring AI skills increased from 0.3% in 2019 to 0.4% in 2022”.