The order establishes stringent standards for AI safety and security, safeguards Americans’ privacy, promotes equity and civil rights, protects consumers and workers, fosters innovation and competition, and enhances American leadership on the global stage.

Key actions outlined in the order:

1. New standards for AI safety and security: The order mandates that developers of powerful AI systems share safety test results and critical information with the U.S. government. Rigorous standards, tools, and tests will be developed to ensure AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy before public release. Additionally, measures will be taken to protect against the risks of using AI to engineer dangerous biological materials and combat AI-enabled fraud and deception.
2. Protecting citizens’ privacy: The President calls on Congress to pass bipartisan data privacy legislation, prioritizing federal support for privacy-preserving techniques, especially those using AI. Guidelines will be developed for federal agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of privacy-preserving techniques, including those used in AI systems.
3. Advancing equity and civil rights: Clear guidance will be provided to prevent AI algorithms from exacerbating discrimination, especially in areas like housing and federal benefit programs. Best practices will be established for the use of AI in the criminal justice system to ensure fairness.
4. Standing up for consumers, patients, and students: Responsible use of AI in healthcare and education will be promoted, ensuring that consumers are protected from harmful AI applications while benefiting from its advancements in these sectors.
5. Supporting workers: Principles and best practices will be developed to mitigate the harms and maximise the benefits of AI for workers, addressing issues such as job displacement, workplace equity, and health and safety. A report on AI’s potential labour-market impacts will be produced, identifying options for strengthening federal support for workers facing labour disruptions due to AI.
6. Promoting innovation and competition: The order aims to catalyse AI research across the US, promote a fair and competitive AI ecosystem, and expand the ability of highly skilled immigrants and non-immigrants to study, stay, and work in the US to foster innovation in the field.
7. Advancing leadership abroad: The US will collaborate with other nations to establish international frameworks for safe and trustworthy AI deployment. Efforts will be made to accelerate the development and implementation of vital AI standards with international partners and promote the responsible development and deployment of AI abroad to address global challenges.
8. Ensuring responsible and effective government adoption: Clear standards and guidelines will be issued for government agencies’ use of AI to protect rights and safety. Efforts will be made to help agencies acquire AI products and services more rapidly and efficiently, and an AI talent surge will be initiated to enhance government capacity in AI-related fields.

The executive order signifies a major step forward in the US towards harnessing the potential of AI while safeguarding individuals’ rights and security.

“As we advance this agenda at home, the Administration will work with allies and partners abroad on a strong international framework to govern the development and use of AI,” wrote the White House in a statement.

“The actions that President Biden directed today are vital steps forward in the US’ approach on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI. More action will be required, and the Administration will continue to work with Congress to pursue bipartisan legislation to help America lead the way in responsible innovation.”

The administration’s commitment to responsible innovation is paramount and sets the stage for continued collaboration with international partners to shape the future of AI globally.

(Photo by David Everett Strickler on Unsplash)

See also: UK paper highlights AI risks ahead of global Safety Summit

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UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has spoken today on the global responsibility to confront the risks highlighted in the report and harness AI’s potential. Sunak emphasised the need for honest dialogue about the dual nature of AI: offering unprecedented opportunities, while also posing significant dangers.

“AI will bring new knowledge, new opportunities for economic growth, new advances in human capability, and the chance to solve problems we once thought beyond us. But it also brings new dangers and new fears,” said Sunak.

“So, the responsible thing for me to do is to address those fears head-on, giving you the peace of mind that we will keep you safe while making sure you and your children have all the opportunities for a better future that AI can bring.

“Doing the right thing, not the easy thing, means being honest with people about the risks from these technologies.”

The report delves into the rapid advancements of frontier AI, drawing on numerous sources. It highlights the diverse perspectives within scientific, expert, and global communities regarding the risks associated with the swift evolution of AI technology. 

The publication comprises three key sections:

1. Capabilities and risks from frontier AI: This section presents a discussion paper advocating further research into AI risk. It delineates the current state of frontier AI capabilities, potential future improvements, and associated risks, including societal harms, misuse, and loss of control.
2. Safety and security risks of generative AI to 2025: Drawing on intelligence assessments, this report outlines the potential global benefits of generative AI while highlighting the increased safety and security risks. It underscores the enhancement of threat actor capabilities and the effectiveness of attacks due to generative AI development.
3. Future risks of frontier AI: Prepared by the Government Office for Science, this report explores uncertainties in frontier AI development, future system risks, and potential scenarios for AI up to 2030.

The report – based on declassified information from intelligence agencies – focuses on generative AI, the technology underpinning popular chatbots and image generation software. It foresees a future where AI might be exploited by terrorists to plan biological or chemical attacks, raising serious concerns about global security.

Sjuul van der Leeuw, CEO of Deployteq, commented: “It is good to see the government take a serious approach, offering a report ahead of the Safety Summit next week however more must be done.

“An ongoing effort to address AI risks is needed and we hope that the summit brings much-needed clarity, allowing businesses and marketers to enjoy the benefits this emerging piece of technology offers, without the worry of backlash.”

The report highlights that generative AI could be utilised to gather knowledge on physical attacks by non-state violent actors, including creating chemical, biological, and radiological weapons.

Although companies are working to implement safeguards, the report emphasises the varying effectiveness of these measures. Obstacles to obtaining the necessary knowledge, raw materials, and equipment for such attacks are decreasing, with AI potentially accelerating this process.

Additionally, the report warns of the likelihood of AI-driven cyber-attacks becoming faster-paced, more effective, and on a larger scale by 2025. AI could aid hackers in mimicking official language, and overcome previous challenges faced in this area.

However, some experts have questioned the UK Government’s approach.

Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said: “Over 1,300 technologists and leaders signed our open letter calling AI a force for good rather than an existential threat to humanity.

“AI won’t grow up like The Terminator. If we take the proper steps, it will be a trusted co-pilot from our earliest school days to our retirement.

The AI Safety Summit will aim to foster healthy discussion around how to address frontier AI risks, encompassing misuse by non-state actors for cyberattacks or bioweapon design and concerns related to AI systems acting autonomously contrary to human intentions. Discussions at the summit will also extend to broader societal impacts, such as election disruption, bias, crime, and online safety.

Claire Trachet, CEO of Trachet, commented: “The fast-growing nature of AI has made it difficult for governments to balance creating effective regulation which safeguards the interest of businesses and consumers without stifling investment opportunities. Even though there are some forms of risk management and different reports coming out now, none of them are true coordinated approaches.

“The UK Government’s commitment to AI safety is commendable, but the criticism surrounding the summit serves as a reminder of the importance of a balanced, constructive, and forward-thinking approach to AI regulation.”

If the UK Government’s report is anything to go by, the need for collaboration around proportionate but rigorous measures to manage the risks posed by AI is more imperative than ever.

The global AI Safety Summit is set to take place at the historic Bletchley Park on 1 – 2 November 2023.

(Image Credit: GOV.UK)

See also: BSI: Closing ‘AI confidence gap’ key to unlocking benefits

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Representatives from Adobe, Cohere, IBM, Nvidia, Palantir, Salesforce, Scale AI, and Stability attended the White House for the announcement. These eight companies have pledged to play a pivotal role in promoting the development of safe, secure, and trustworthy AI.

The Biden-Harris Administration is actively working on an Executive Order and pursuing bipartisan legislation to ensure the US leads the way in responsible AI development that unlocks its potential while managing its risks.

The commitments made by these companies revolve around three fundamental principles: safety, security, and trust. They have committed to:

1. Ensure products are safe before introduction:

The companies commit to rigorous internal and external security testing of their AI systems before releasing them to the public. This includes assessments by independent experts, helping guard against significant AI risks such as biosecurity, cybersecurity, and broader societal effects.

They will also actively share information on AI risk management with governments, civil society, academia, and across the industry. This collaborative approach will include sharing best practices for safety, information on attempts to circumvent safeguards, and technical cooperation.

2. Build systems with security as a top priority:

The companies have pledged to invest in cybersecurity and insider threat safeguards to protect proprietary and unreleased model weights. Recognising the critical importance of these model weights in AI systems, they commit to releasing them only when intended and when security risks are adequately addressed.

Additionally, the companies will facilitate third-party discovery and reporting of vulnerabilities in their AI systems. This proactive approach ensures that issues can be identified and resolved promptly even after an AI system is deployed.

3. Earn the public’s trust:

To enhance transparency and accountability, the companies will develop robust technical mechanisms – such as watermarking systems – to indicate when content is AI-generated. This step aims to foster creativity and productivity while reducing the risks of fraud and deception.

They will also publicly report on their AI systems’ capabilities, limitations, and areas of appropriate and inappropriate use, covering both security and societal risks, including fairness and bias. Furthermore, these companies are committed to prioritising research on the societal risks posed by AI systems, including addressing harmful bias and discrimination.

These leading AI companies will also develop and deploy advanced AI systems to address significant societal challenges, from cancer prevention to climate change mitigation, contributing to the prosperity, equality, and security of all.

The Biden-Harris Administration’s engagement with these commitments extends beyond the US, with consultations involving numerous international partners and allies. These commitments complement global initiatives, including the UK’s Summit on AI Safety, Japan’s leadership of the G-7 Hiroshima Process, and India’s leadership as Chair of the Global Partnership on AI.

The announcement marks a significant milestone in the journey towards responsible AI development, with industry leaders and the government coming together to ensure that AI technology benefits society while mitigating its inherent risks.

(Photo by Tabrez Syed on Unsplash)

See also: UK’s AI ecosystem to hit £2.4T by 2027, third in global race

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with Digital Transformation Week.

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The Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy (CAIDP) claims OpenAI has violated section five of the FTC Act—alleging the company of deceptive and unfair practices.

Marc Rotenberg, Founder and President of the CAIDP, said:

“The FTC has a clear responsibility to investigate and prohibit unfair and deceptive trade practices. We believe that the FTC should look closely at OpenAI and GPT-4.

We are specifically asking the FTC to determine whether the company has complied with the guidance the federal agency has issued.”

The CAIDP claims that OpenAI’s GPT-4 is “biased, deceptive, and a risk to privacy and public safety”.

The think tank cited contents in the GPT-4 System Card that describe the model’s potential to reinforce biases and worldviews, including harmful stereotypes and demeaning associations for certain marginalised groups.

In the aforementioned System Card, OpenAI acknowledges that it “found that the model has the potential to reinforce and reproduce specific biases and worldviews, including harmful stereotypical and demeaning associations for certain marginalized groups.”

Furthermore, the document states: “AI systems will have even greater potential to reinforce entire ideologies, worldviews, truths and untruths, and to cement them or lock them in, foreclosing future contestation, reflection, and improvement.”

Other harmful outcomes that OpenAI says GPT-4 could lead to include:

1. Advice or encouragement for self-harm behaviours
2. Graphic material such as erotic or violent content
3. Harassing, demeaning, and hateful content
4. Content useful for planning attacks or violence
5. Instructions for finding illegal content

The CAIDP claims that OpenAI released GPT-4 to the public without an independent assessment of its risks.

Last week, the FTC told American companies advertising AI products:

“Merely warning your customers about misuse or telling them to make disclosures is hardly sufficient to deter bad actors.

Your deterrence measures should be durable, built-in features and not bug corrections or optional features that third parties can undermine via modification or removal.”

With its filing, the CAIDP calls on the FTC to investigate the products of OpenAI and other operators of powerful AI systems, prevent further commercial releases of GPT-4, and ensure the establishment of necessary guardrails to protect consumers, businesses, and the commercial marketplace.

Merve Hickok, Chair and Research Director of the CAIDP, commented:

“We are at a critical moment in the evolution of AI products.

We recognise the opportunities and we support research. But without the necessary safeguards established to limit bias and deception, there is a serious risk to businesses, consumers, and public safety.

The FTC is uniquely positioned to address this challenge.”

The complaint was filed as Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and other AI experts signed a petition to “pause” development on AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

However, other high-profile figures believe progress shouldn’t be slowed/halted:

Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, which was originally created as a nonprofit with the mission of ensuring that AI benefits humanity. Musk resigned from OpenAI’s board in 2018 and has publicly questioned the company’s transformation:

Global approaches to AI regulation

As AI systems become more advanced and powerful, concerns over their potential risks and biases have grown. Organisations such as CAIDP, UNESCO, and the Future of Life Institute are pushing for ethical guidelines and regulations to be put in place to protect the public and ensure the responsible development of AI technology.

UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) has called on countries to implement its “Recommendation on the Ethics of AI” framework.

Earlier today, Italy banned ChatGPT. The country’s data protection authorities said it would be investigated and the system does not have a proper legal basis to be collecting personal information about the people using it.

The wider EU is establishing a strict regulatory environment for AI, in contrast to the UK’s relatively “light-touch” approach.

Tim Wright, Partner and specialist tech and AI regulation lawyer at law firm Fladgate, commented on the UK’s vision:

“The regulatory principles set out in the whitepaper simply confirm the Government’s preferred approach which they say will encourage innovation in the space without imposing an undue burden on businesses developing and adopting AI while encouraging fair and ethical use and protecting individuals.

Time will tell if this sector-by-sector approach has the desired effect. What it does do is put the UK on a completely different approach from the EU, which is pushing through a detailed rulebook backed up by a new liability regime and overseen by a single super AI regulator.”

As always, it’s a balancing act between regulation and innovation. Not enough regulation puts the public at risk while too much risks driving innovation elsewhere.

(Photo by Ben Sweet on Unsplash)

Related: What will AI regulation look like for businesses?

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The event is co-located with Digital Transformation Week.

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Michelle Donelan, Science, Innovation, and Technology Secretary, said: “AI has the potential to make Britain a smarter, healthier and happier place to live and work. Artificial intelligence is no longer the stuff of science fiction, and the pace of AI development is staggering, so we need to have rules to make sure it is developed safely.

“Our new approach is based on strong principles so that people can trust businesses to unleash this technology of tomorrow.”

The framework, set out in the AI regulation white paper, is based on these five principles:

• Safety – Ensuring that applications function in a secure, safe, and robust manner.
• Transparency and explainability – Organisations that deploy AI should communicate when and how it’s used. Furthermore, they should be able to explain a system’s decision-making process.
• Fairness – Ensure compatibility with the UK’s existing laws, including the Equality Act 2010 and UK GDPR.
• Accountability and governance – Introducing measures to ensure appropriate oversight of AI.
• Contestability and redress – Ensure that people have clear routes to dispute outcomes or decisions generated by AI.

The principles will be applied by existing regulators in their sectors rather than through the creation of a single new regulator. The government has allocated £2m ($2.7m) to fund an AI sandbox, where businesses can test AI products and services.

Over the next year, regulators will issue guidance to organisations and other resources to implement the principles. Legislation could also be introduced to ensure the principles are considered consistently.

A consultation has also been launched by the government on new processes to improve coordination between regulators and to evaluate the effectiveness of the framework.

Emma Wright, Head of Technology, Data, and Digital at law firm Harbottle & Lewis, commented:

“I do welcome industry-specific regulation rather than primary legislation covering AI  (such as the EU is proposing). However, I am concerned that this is essentially another consultation paper calling for regulators to produce more guidance when entrepreneurs and investors are looking for greater regulatory certainty. 

The use of AI is becoming mainstream with the arrival of ChatGPT and not enough attention has been given to the need for capacity building within the existing regulators who will now be tasked with driving responsible innovation whilst not stifling investment. 

Building trustworthy AI will be the key to greater adoption and setting basic frameworks for entrepreneurs and investors to operate is not at odds with this. Although regulatory sandboxes have been successfully used in the past in other tech verticals, such as fintech, the issue is that lots of the AI tools currently being released have unintended consequences when made available for general use – it seems hard to see how a true sandbox environment will be able to replicate such scenarios and risks damaging any trust users place in an AI tool that has been sandboxed but produces discriminatory results or output.

It is possible to have a pro-innovation approach while setting basic frameworks to be followed such as the UNESCO Recommendation on Ethical AI (that the UK is a signatory to) and it feels like a little bit of a missed opportunity to have missed aligning a pro-innovation environment with what responsible AI use means today rather than at some point in the future.”

The UK’s AI industry currently employs over 50,000 people and contributed £3.7bn to the economy in 2022. Britain is home to twice as many companies offering AI services and products as any other European country, with hundreds of new firms created each year.

Behind the US and China, the UK’s tech sector overall has the third-highest amount of VC investment in the world – more than Germany and France combined – and has produced more than double the number of $1 billion tech firms than any other European country.

However, concerns have been raised that AI could pose risks to privacy, human rights, and safety, as well as the fairness of using AI tools to make decisions that affect people’s lives, such as assessing loan or mortgage applications.

The proposals in the white paper aim to address these concerns and have been warmly welcomed by businesses, which previously called for more coordination between regulators to ensure effective implementation across the economy.

Lila Ibrahim, COO at DeepMind, commented: “AI has the potential to advance science and benefit humanity in numerous ways, from combating climate change to better understanding and treating diseases. This transformative technology can only reach its full potential if it is trusted, which requires public and private partnership in the spirit of pioneering responsibly.

“The UK’s proposed context-driven approach will help regulation keep pace with the development of AI, support innovation, and mitigate future risks.”

Grazia Vittadini, CTO at Rolls-Royce, added: “Both our business and our customers will benefit from agile, context-driven AI regulation.

“It will enable us to continue to lead the technical and quality assurance innovations for safety-critical industrial AI applications, while remaining compliant with the standards of integrity, responsibility, and trust that society demands from AI developers.”

The new framework aims to provide protections for the public without stifling the use of AI in developing the economy, better jobs, and new discoveries.

Separately, an open letter posted today – signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and over 1,000 other experts – called for a halt to “out-of-control” AI development.

You can find a full copy of the UK’s AI regulation whitepaper here.

(Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash)

Related: Editorial: UK puts AI at the centre of its Budget

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The event is co-located with Digital Transformation Week.

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Babylon Health’s chatbot is available in the company’s GP at Hand app, a digital healthcare solution championed by health secretary Matt Hancock that was also integrated into Samsung Health since last year.

The chatbot aims to reduce the burden on GPs and A&E departments by automating the triage process to determine whether someone can treat themselves at home, should book an online or in-person GP appointment, or go straight to a hospital.

A Twitter user under the pseudonym of Dr Murphy first reached out to us back in 2018 alleging that Babylon Health’s chatbot was giving unsafe advice. Dr Murphy recently unveiled himself as Dr David Watkins and went public with his findings at The Royal Society of Medicine’s “Recent developments in AI and digital health 2020“ event in addition to appearing on a BBC Newsnight report.

Over the past couple of years, Dr Watkins has provided many examples of the chatbot giving dangerous advice. In one example, an obese 48-year-old heavy smoker patient who presented himself with chest pains was suggested to book a consultation “in the next few hours”. Anyone with any common sense would have told you to dial an emergency number straight away.

This particular issue has since been rectified but Dr Watkins has highlighted many further examples over the years which show, very clearly, there are serious safety issues.

In a press release (PDF) on Monday, Babylon Health calls Dr Watkins a “troll” who has “targeted members of our staff, partners, clients, regulators and journalists and tweeted defamatory content about us”.

According to the release, Dr Watkins has conducted 2,400 tests of the chatbot in a bid to discredit the service while raising “fewer than 100 test results which he considered concerning”.

Babylon Health claims that in just 20 cases did Dr Watkins find genuine errors while others were “misrepresentations” or “mistakes,” according to Babylon’s own “panel of senior clinicians” who remain unnamed.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Dr Watkins called Babylon’s claims “utterly nonsense” and questions where the startup got its figures from as “there are certainly not 2,400 completed triage assessments”.

Dr Watkins estimates he has conducted between 800 and 900 full triages, some of which were repeat tests to see whether Babylon Health had fixed the issues he previously highlighted.

The doctor acknowledges Babylon Health’s chatbot has improved and has issues around the rate of around one in three instances. In 2018, when Dr Watkins first reached out to us and other outlets, he says this rate was “one in one”.

While it’s one account versus the other, the evidence shows that Babylon Health’s chatbot has issued dangerous advice on a number of occasions. Dr Watkins has dedicated many hours to highlighting these issues to Babylon Health in order to improve patient safety.

Rather than welcome his efforts and work with Dr Watkins to improve their service, it seems Babylon Health has decided to go on the offensive and “try and discredit someone raising patient safety concerns”.

In their press release, Babylon accuses Watkins of posting “over 6,000” misleading attacks but without giving details of where. Dr Watkins primarily uses Twitter to post his findings. His account, as of writing, has tweeted a total of 3,925 times and not just about Babylon’s service.

This isn’t the first time Babylon Health’s figures have come into question. Back in June 2018, Babylon Health held an event where it boasted its AI beat trainee GPs at the MRCGP exam used for testing their ability to diagnose medical problems. The average pass mark is 72 percent. “How did Babylon Health do?” said Dr Mobasher Butt at the event, a director at Babylon Health. “It got 82 percent.”

Given the number of dangerous suggestions to trivial ailments the chatbot has given, especially at the time, it’s hard to imagine the claim that it beats trainee GPs as being correct. Intriguingly, the video of the event has since been deleted from Babylon Health’s YouTube account and the company removed all links to coverage of it from the “Babylon in the news” part of its website.

When asked why it deleted the content, Babylon Health said in a statement: “As a fast-paced and dynamic health-tech company, Babylon is constantly refreshing the website with new information about our products and services. As such, older content is often removed to make way for the new.”

AI solutions like those offered by Babylon Health will help to reduce the demand on health services and ensure people have access to the right information and care whenever and wherever they need it. However, patient safety must come first.

Mistakes are less forgivable in healthcare due to the risk of potentially fatal or lifechanging consequences. The usual “move fast and break things” ethos in tech can’t apply here. 

There’s a general acceptance that rarely is a new technology going to be without its problems, but people want to see that best efforts are being made to limit and address those issues. Instead of welcoming those pointing out issues with their service before it leads to a serious incident, it seems Babylon Health would rather blame everyone else for its faults.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this? Attend the co-located 5G Expo, IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, AI & Big Data Expo, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam.

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Feige had just finished giving a talk entitled ‘Fairness in AI: Latest developments in AI safety’ at this year’s AI Expo Global. We managed to grab him to get more of his thoughts on the issue.

Rightfully, people are becoming increasingly concerned about unfair and unsafe AIs. Human biases are seeping into algorithms which poses a very real danger that prejudices and oppression could become automated by accident.

AI News reported last week on research from New York University that found inequality in STEM-based careers is causing algorithms to work better or worse for some parts of society over others.

Similar findings, by Joy Buolamwini and her team from the Algorithmic Justice League, highlighted a disparity in the effectiveness of the world’s leading facial recognition systems between genders and skin tones.

In an ideal world, all parts of society would be equally represented tomorrow. The reality is that issue is going to take much longer to rectify, but AI technologies are becoming increasingly used across society today.

AI News asked Feige for his perspective and how the impact of that problem can be reduced much sooner.

“I think the most important thing for organisations to do is to spend more time thinking about bias and on ensuring that every model they build is unbiased because a demographically disparate team can build non-disparate tech.”

Some companies are seeking to build AIs which can scan for bias in other algorithms. We asked Feige for his view on whether he believes this is an ideal solution.

“Definitely, I showed one in my talk. We have tests for: You give me a black box algorithm, I have no idea what your algorithm does – but I can give an input, calculate the output, and I can just tell you how biased it is according to various definitions of bias.”

“We can go even further and say: Let’s modify your algorithm and give it back so it’s unbiased according to one of those definitions.”

In the Western world, we consider ourselves fairly liberal and protective of individual freedoms. China, potentially the world’s leader in AI, has a questionable human rights record and is known for invasive surveillance and mass data collection. Meanwhile, Russia has a reputation for military aggression which some are concerned will drive its AI developments. Much of the Middle East, while not considered leaders in AI, is behind most of the world in areas such as female and gay rights.

We asked Feige for his thoughts on whether these regional attitudes could find their way into AI developments.

“It’s an interesting question. It’s not that some regions will take the issue more or less seriously, they just have different … we’ll say preferences. I suspect China takes surveillance and facial recognition seriously – more seriously than the UK – but they do so in order to leverage it for mass surveillance, for population control.”

“The UK is trying to walk a fine line in efficiently using that very useful technology but not undermine personal privacy and freedom of individuals.”

During his talk, Feige made the point that he’s less concerned about AI biases due to the fact that – unlike humans – algorithms can be controlled.

“This is a real source of optimism for me, just because human decision-making is incredibly biased and everyone knows that.”

Feige asked the audience to raise a hand if they were concerned about AI bias which prompted around half to do so. The same question was asked regarding human bias and most of the room had their hand up.

“You can be precise with machine learning algorithms. You can say: ‘This is the objective I’m trying to achieve, I’m trying to maximise the probability of a candidate being successful at their job according to historical people in their role’. Or, you can be precise about the data the model is trained on and say: ‘I’m going to ignore data from before this time period because things were ‘different’ back then’”.

“Humans have fixed past experiences they can’t control. I can’t change the fact my mum did most of the cooking when I was growing up and I don’t know how it affects my decision-making.”

“I also can’t force myself to hire based on success in their jobs, which I try to do. It’s hard to know if really I just had a good conversation about the football with the candidate.”

Faculty, of which Feige has the role of head of research, is a European company based in London. With the EU Commission recently publishing its guidelines on AI development, we took the opportunity to get his views on them.

“At a high-level, I think they’re great. They align quite a bit with how we think about these things. My biggest wish, whenever a body like that puts together some principles, is that there’s a big gap between that level of guidelines and what is useful for practitioners. Making those more precise is really important and those weren’t precise enough by my standards.”

“But not to just advocate putting the responsibility on policymakers. There’s also an onus on practitioners to try and articulate what bias looks like statistically and how that may apply to different problems, and then say: ‘Ok policy body, which of these is most relevant and can you now make those statements in this language’ and basically bridge the gap.”

Google recently created, then axed, a dedicated ‘ethics board’ for its AI developments. Such boards seem a good idea but representing society can be a minefield. Google’s faced criticism for having a conservative figure with strong anti-LGBTQ and immigrant views on the board.

Feige provided his take on whether companies should have an independent AI oversight board to ensure their developments are safe and ethical.

“To some degree, definitely. I suspect there are some cases you want that oversight board to be very external and like a regulator with a lot of overhead and a lot of teeth.”

“At Faculty, each one of our product teams has a shadow team – which has practically the same skill set – who monitor and oversee the work done by the project team to ensure it follows our internal set of values and guidelines.”

“I think the fundamental question here is how to do this in a productive way and ensure AI safety but that it doesn’t grind innovation to a halt. You can imagine where the UK has a really strong oversight stance and then some other country with much less regulatory oversight has companies which become large multinationals and operate in the UK anyway.”

Getting the balance right around regulation is difficult. Our sister publication IoT News interviewed a digital lawyer who raised the concern that Europe’s strict GDPR regulations will cause AI companies in the continent to fall behind their counterparts in Asia and America which have access to far more data.

Feige believes there is the danger of this happening, but European countries like the UK – whether it ultimately remains part of the EU and subject to regulations like GDPR or not – can use it as an opportunity to lead in AI safety.

Three reasons are provided why the UK could achieve this:

1. The UK has significant AI talent and renowned universities.
2. It has a fairly unobjectionable record and respected government (Feige clarifies in comparison to how some countries view the US and China).
3. The UK has a fairly robust existing regulatory infrastructure – especially in areas such as financial services.

Among the biggest concerns about AI continues to be around its impact on the workforce, particularly whether it will replace low-skilled workers. We wanted to know whether using legislation to protect human workers is a good idea.

“You could ask the question a hundred years ago: ‘Should automation come into agriculture because 90 percent of the population works in it?’ and now it’s almost all automated. I suspect individuals may be hurt by automation but their children will be better off by it.”

“I think any heavy-handed regulation will have unintended consequences and should be thought about well.”

Our discussion with Feige was insightful and provided optimism that AI can be developed safely and fairly, as long as there’s a will to do so.

You can watch our full interview with Feige from AI Expo Global 2019 below:

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and their use cases? Attend the co-located AI & Big Data Expo events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam to learn more. Co-located with the IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

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