The Atos and Onward partnership report on AI + Ethics

Working in partnership with Onward concluding with a report entitled ‘Hardwiring trust: Data ethics and the application of AI’.

Hardwiring trust: Data ethics and the application of AI

This is a summary report of a major Onward and Atos partnership series of events, held in Spring/Summer 2019. Over two roundtable events in the Houses of Parliament, we brought together leading parliamentarians, industry professionals, start-ups, regulators and experts to explore the implications of AI and machine learning, and discuss how policymakers should best respond.

Roundtable 1: ‘Trusting AI: How do we know what’s in the black box?’. This considered how we can foster greater trust and understanding of AI, robotics and machine learning.

Roundtable 2: ‘Positive AI: How does AI make lives better?’. This considered the positive benefits of AI, and the main barriers to further adoption.

Overall, the two roundtables concluded with three main points:

Communication: there is a core communications challenge

Accountability: it is unclear who bears the costs when AI goes wrong

Accessibility: we must ensure that all types of organisations – large, small, start-up – are part of the conversation

There is no doubt that AI can be a force for good. Ensuring it is able to be is the bigger challenge.