On 25th January 2023 Policy Connect, through the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Data Analytics, held the first of three evidence gathering roundtables on the highly topical subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Ethics. This is as part of an inquiry which aims to identify practical governance and regulatory measures and tools to support the ethical development of AI in the UK for the benefit of citizens and thereby businesses. 

The event was chaired by Lord Tim Clement-Jones, co-chair of the AI and Ethics inquiry, and held under Chatham House rules. Introductory remarks were made by Dr Adrian Weller, The Alan Turing Institute; Rachel Coldicutt, Careful Industries; Rashik Parmar, CEO of The British Computer Society; and Sue Daley, TechUK. Participants included a range of stakeholders across industry, academia and the third sector, and from government.

The discussion explored broad issues such as making an ethical approach part of the culture of an organisation, and governance that focusses on the impacts on individuals including users, citizens, and company employees. It also looked at specifics – identifying a range of governance and regulation tools, from complex concepts such as anticipatory governance to the practical measure of mandating watermarks to show when an image, video, or piece of text has been generated by a computer.

Speakers addressed the pros and cons of models of cross-sectoral regulation versus sector-by-sector regulation, and the potential implications of each model for business growth, smart regulation, and achieving human-centric ethical AI development that puts more power in the hands of citizens and users. Some participants stressed pro-innovation angles and others a more cautious, risk-based approach.

The second evidence session will be held on Wednesday 22 February. You can read more about it here.