Telefonica adopts ethical principles to guide its AI work

The Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica has released a set of Principles of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to guide its design, development and use of AI. Projects which include AI will from now on be assessed in accordance with ethical principles such as fairness (avoiding discrimination related to race, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc.), transparency and explainability (so users know that they are interacting with an AI system and how that system uses their data), people-centric, and privacy and security by design. The principles, approved by the company’s executive committee, are to apply in ‘all the markets in which [it] operates, and extend throughout the entire value chain, through partners and providers’.