Question: As AI and machine learning continue to advance, what do you see as the most pressing ethical challenges we face in their development and deployment, and what strategies or frameworks should we adopt to ensure these technologies benefit society as a whole?

Melissa U answered on 23 Mar 2025:

Great question, now that AI exists we need to think critically about how to make it beneficial rather than destructive. For me two fundamental issues need to be considered
– the amount of energy which is required to process the big data on which AI is built, and how generation of that energy impacts the planet/allocation of resources to competing needs
– use of personal data to build the machine learning models, for example, I may not care that spatial data like my travel patterns from home to work each day is gathered by my phone and then used to inform lots of models (this doesn’t feel particularly precious or personal to me) but I do care if data that I might choose to record on a health monitoring app on my phone is used to inform models (this feels much more personal and I want to be able to decline to give consent for access to it)