It doesn’t take long when reading mainstream or social media to bump into discussions related to the ethical use of data and the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI). Recent high court decisions on the use of facial recognition technology in policing in the UK. The challenges facing all governments with the introduction of contact tracing. The impact of algorithms on everyday life events. Social media bias, insurance and recent education results - all of these deal in some way with a decision about what is legal and right to do with data.
Not all of the challenges are due to a lack of policies for new technology. The recent High Court judgement on the use of facial recognition technology, though a complex regulatory issue, called out the failure of South Wales Police to perform standard assessments that could have been expected for this type of data process. Namely, the force failed to address the following criteria:
None of these failures was down to a lack of policies or regulation, nor a technical mis-understanding. They were all down to poorly-applied practices.
Admittedly, there are circumstances where the complexities of using new tech have yet to be fully understood and regulated. But for the majority of businesses, the processes and policies that you should be applying are already out there.
In the UK, we are blessed that our Government (and some regulators) is significantly focused on the increasing opportunities offered by data and AI. However, as a chief data officer trying to wade through current government policy and investment can take a significant amount of time and research.
And as a C-suite officer, having access to readily digestible understanding of the issues you should be briefed on is difficult, unless your organisation already has dedicated resource focused on this topic.
There are a multitude of different government organisations and industry bodies, all of which have in some way created recommendations, tools and guidelines for the subject. The purpose of this article - and two that will follow - is to summarise who is currently active, what they are looking at and why, and the opportunities for you and your business to access standards or to take part in innovations where data ethics and AI are sensitively considered.
The last 3 to 4 years have seen an explosion of government initiatives in areas associated with data, AI and ethics. Table 1 shows some of the many different bodies that are working to establish policies and standards and the complexity of their inter-relationships. All of the players shown here have a government link. They are the regulators, thought leaders and established authorities across government bodies or are government-funded in some way.
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