The gold rush around AI has prompted growing demand for intelligent products across industries, and an influx of capital directed to AI startups that can respond to this call with new innovations. But while AI shows great promise in improving efficiency and productivity, it is also a volatile and dangerous technology if unregulated, with ample evidence to demonstrate how automated decision-making systems have introduced new forms of inequality and exacerbated existing harms to the American public. ‘AI ethics’ is a critical area of study and practice, but is nebulous because thus far it evades formal definition; though a call for ‘ethics’ pushes us prioritize considering our values and beliefs and how they’re imbued into technological choices, they are not always meaningfully the same across contexts and stakeholders. This creates a vacuum for their broad interpretation during the development stage of AI systems in particular, during which decisions that relate to ethics are formalized and made functional, and within a context of a regulatory environment that is itself in flux. Given the need for capital investment to stay afloat, startups that successfully win venture capital (VC) backing are contractually obligated to involve investors’ guidance into their calculus as they drive to product. How this influence shapes decision-making for new AI products is the core concern of this project. Samuel plans to investigate the relationship between VC firms and AI startups to understand how capital structures the potential and promise of AI.
