The Sustainable Use of Big Data and AI at Nexar: Our Ethical Pledge
The Nexar Mobility Network has the potential to become a key component of the world’s present and future, making transport and mobility both safer and more efficient. This network will become an essential part of our lives and will provide the same level of welfare we see in other networks, such as broadband and the Internet.
The Nexar Network unlocks huge positive externalities as it grows from thousands to millions of nodes and digitises the roads. The more the network grows, the fresher and more relevant the digitisation and the overall utility of the network becomes. Instead of having to deploy expensive infrastructure to monitor the roads, requiring both an upfront investment as well as continued operational expenses, this network grows organically, just because it provides value to all the individual participants of the network.
The ability to estimate and predict the position of all vehicles at any point in time has the potential to almost completely eliminate all road casualties. As we see autonomous vehicles develop, this mobility network becomes a virtual sensor for the vehicle, allowing sensing the road beyond line of sight.
And it’s not just about safety. With this network, we can manage traffic more efficiently, leveraging existing road infrastructure to reduce congestion and increase traffic flows. We can also reduce emissions, and save energy. We can automate intersections and remove traffic lights. We can see when pedestrians are about to cross the road, and have cars adjust their speed smoothly to allow a coordinated space.
We run artificial intelligence services, both onboard the cars as well as in the central cloud servers, as the backbone of the network. We see videos, images, and sense the road, and the surroundings of the road, non-stop 24x7. These smart nodes running at the edge become more and more powerful over time, both as compute architectures become more efficient, and further research in AI comes to light.
The positive utility and social welfare this network can create is immense. But it’s possible for such a network to be misused, and used for other purposes to the ones originally intended. And the question then becomes how do we protect from misuse. What should be the boundary of what we define as a good positive externality of the network?
The concerns of the Nexar Mobility Network being misused requires us to be proactive , and define our ethical operating principles. These principles guide our decisions, especially around what features and uses we can and can’t extract from the network. We don’t yet know what use cases will be possible in the future once the network sees any road anywhere in the world continuously. Hence it’s important to have clear standards to guide us.
Objectives for the Use of Big Data and AI at Nexar
We apply technology to create social welfare
Our technological focus is in the development and implementation of algorithms that make the roads safer and efficient, and that as a consequence results in a better future of mobility, one where we create social welfare. When faced with use cases that become possible when digitising the world, we will evaluate whether they will result in safer and more efficient mobility, and as a consequence benefit society.
We protect individual privacy
Our users’ data is their own. We will never share individual data with a 3rd party unless it is authorised by the user and done on her request. We will actively engineer the Nexar mobility network with built-in anonymization to prevent any breach of users’ privacy. We will comply with the law but build our network so that it cannot function as a government tool for the purpose of tracking individuals.
We will not track individuals or enable the usage of the Nexar network by 3rd parties that would violate individual privacy. We will abide to protect the privacy of any subjects observed by the network.
We are digitising the physical world
As the network looks at the world, our focus is in digitising the road and its surroundings. Our objective is to understand what is happening on the road in order to make the roads safer and more efficient. We will actively prevent any application resulting from digitising the physical world that requires 3rd party individuals’ data for it to function properly.
We pay special attention to actively filter out the details of any salacious, violent, or criminal content or event happening on the network.
We remain accountable for our work
As we develop technology using big data and AI to digitise the world, it is important that we remain accountable for our work. We will ensure human judgement, direction and control of the findings. We will strive for explainability and actively ensure we are aware, measuring, and communicating bias. We will also seek the highest standard and work with academia and external stakeholders that provide the necessary level of scrutiny and accountability that ensure we are developing applications that create social welfare.
What We Will Not Pursue
- Use of the Nexar mobility network as a panopticum for the monitoring of individuals and use for and by law enforcement.
- Use of the Nexar mobility network to contravene the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.