| | 9CIOReviewSEPTEMBER 2020Image Recognition has huge implications for diverse set of industries, from self-driving cars, to identity validation to potentially spotting a specific individual in a crowdand dropped off and a smart vehicle will come and ferry you just like a private car without owning one. You just pay for the time you use it.Perhaps the most significant value of these deep learning and predictive technologies is in the world of healthcare. We can now diagnose and treat medical conditions with a very high degree of accuracy. By crunching an enormous amount of patient data like age, ethnicity, past personal and family medical history, gene markers, it is now possible to design treatments which are highly personalized to each individual patient. This promises to have a quantum improvement in treatment outcomes and quality of life. There is however an area which is yet uncharted. This revolves around ethics and governance oversight. A commonly cited example is what if an accident is inevitable and an autonomous vehicle has to choose between an old person and a child. Whom should it collide with? Or if there are two patients waiting for an organ transplant, one has low likelihood of long-term survival despite the transplant but is first in line and the other has high chance of long-term survival but is behind in line. How do you choose? Real life is actually a lot more complicated than these straightforward examples. Humans for most part are highly accomplished in making these judgement calls. How will intelligent machines make these decisions, is anybody's guess. The concern around governance is equally stark. Consider another emerging technology called Blockchain. In simplest terms, Blockchain is a distributed ledger with multiple nodes distributed across the globe. Every transaction between two or more parties gets instantly recorded in all the nodes, which could be in hundreds, or thousands or even millions. This effectively eliminates the possibility of fraud or dispute because a million copies of the transaction exist on all the nodes. So far so good. What if two or more nodes conduct a transaction which is unlawful? Are you culpable by retaining a copy of this unlawful transaction? It may seem far-fetched but there is actually a huge debate raging on this issue in the academic and legal community. This is where governance oversight and policy planning is crucial so they can plan ahead for such exigencies.
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