Pakistani man wins Facebook ‘Ethics in AI Research’ award

LONDON: A scholar Junaid Qadir from Pakistan has become the winner of the Ethics in AI Research Initiative for the Asia Pacific, an initiative to help support thoughtful and ground-breaking academic research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) ethics.

Junaid Qadir, a Professor at the Information Technology University (ITU) of Punjab participated in the research along with co-investigator Amana Raquib, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi.

To support AI ethics research in the Asia Pacific, Facebook partnered with the Centre for Civil Society and Governance of The University of Hong Kong and the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Hong Kong (PCPD; esteemed co-chair of the Permanent Working Group on Ethics and Data Protection in AI of the Global Privacy Assembly) to launch a request for proposals (RFP) in December 2019.

Junaid Qadir said, “We’re excited to be awarded this grant and are looking forward to beginning this project.”

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) has great potential to facilitate sustainable human development goals, but it also has significant potential for abuse. Through this work, a culturally-informed, pro-social AI framework for Pakistan and the Muslim world will be proposed. In this regard, the rich Islamic legal tradition and the work on objectives (Maqasid) of Islamic law will be leveraged for studying contemporary AI-related issues.”