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Ensuring Data and AI Work for People and Society Foreword

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Ensuring Data and AI Work for People and Society Foreword i The Ada Lovelace Institute Ensuring data and AI work for people society Ensuring data and AI work for people and society Foreword The Ada Lovelace Institute (Ada) has been Engine has no pretensions whatever established by the Nuffield Foundation with to originate anything. It can do whatever a £5m commitment, and with the support we know how to order it to perform.’ of founding partners. Much later, this influenced Alan Turing The Nuffield Foundation is an independent to intervene with the notion of a ‘Turing charitable trust with a mission to Test’ – the test of a machine’s ability to advance educational opportunity and exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable ii social well-being across the UK. It has from that of a human. Ada Lovelace Institute Ada Lovelace long been at the forefront of addressing the ethical questions raised by scientific This debate between perspectives remains advancements. In 1991, the Foundation a live part of the discussion about the established the Nuffield Council on ethical and social implications of artificial Bioethics, which has been influential in intelligence – the extent to which technology establishing ethical frameworks for policy is able to, or should, replace or work in and regulation relating to innovations in partnership with, human intelligence. biology and medicine. We are very grateful to the Trustees and Ada has been created with the support staff of the Nuffield Foundation, particularly of founding partners: The Alan Turing Imogen Parker who has led the development Institute, the Royal Society, the British of the Institute, for their enthusiasm and Academy, the Royal Statistical Society, support, and to the colleagues from our Wellcome Trust, Luminate, techUK and the partner organisations who formed the initial Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Ada is named Advisory Board of the embryonic Institute: after the mathematician Ada Lovelace Dame Colette Bowe, Julie Maxton, Hetan (1815–1852), who wrote in visionary Shah, Genevra Richardson, Martin Tisne, terms about computing and its application Dan O’Connor, Pete Mills, Helen Margetts in the wider world. and Antony Walker. We would also like to acknowledge the large number of individuals Ada Lovelace is famous for some of the working in this field for their time and earliest ever written reflections on artificial generosity in contributing to this project. intelligence, arguing of the computer in a statement that was famously framed as Alan Wilson the ‘Lovelace objection’ that: ‘The Analytical Executive Chair, Ada Lovelace Institute A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to yield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Ada Lovelace Contents 2 The Ada Lovelace Institute 3 The context: the data-driven AI revolution 1 Ensuring data and AI work for people society 4 The agenda: impacts and ethics 6 Ways of working 8 Work with us The Ada Lovelace Institute The Ada Lovelace Institute is an on different groups in society. It will guide independent research and deliberative body ethical practice in the development and with a mission to ensure data and AI work deployment of these technologies, and will for people and society. Ada will promote undertake research and long-term thinking informed public understanding of the to lay the foundations for a data-driven impact of AI and data-driven technologies society with well-being at its core. 2 Ada has three core aims: Ada Lovelace Institute Ada Lovelace 1 2 3 Build evidence Convene diverse Define and inform and foster rigorous voices to create good practice research and debate a shared understanding in the design and on how data and of the ethical issues deployment of AI affect people arising from data data and AI. and society. and AI. In undertaking its work, Ada will: • Be outward-facing and collaborative, acting independently of vested interests, and transparent about relationships and funding. • Be at the forefront of developing change needed to improve people’s lives, through a focus on: rights-based approaches; establishing norms; influencing professional practice; technological innovation; regulation and the law; and public dialogue. • Recognise the potential value of data, algorithms, and AI for individual and social well-being, taking account of human capacity to adapt and respond to new technological challenges. • Combine reflective deliberation and rigorous research with the need to respond to a rapidly evolving social, technological and economic context. • Work with other organisations to situate its work in a global context. The context: the data-driven AI revolution We are living through the fourth industrial the internet – can read, see, hear, translate revolution, driven by computing power languages and can use data to make and information flows across the internet. decisions, often better than humans. This generates and stores huge volumes These decisions are made on rules-based of data, both on and for, individuals and processes that can be automated. organisations. The analytics’ tools of data science and AI transform both the When human responsibility for 3 way we live and business processes in all decisions is still needed, AI can be Ensuring data and AI work for people society kinds of organisations – public and private. thought of as ‘augmented intelligence’. Some organisations are leaders in these Machines can’t yet pass the Turing developments, some have as yet barely test and ‘think’ but they can ‘learn’. engaged. Ultimately, these transformations Health care and many other areas of will be all-embracing. No social policy or service delivery will be revolutionised analysis of the conditions for future social by learning machines: receiving and well-being can be put forward without linking data, and providing inputs now acknowledging the fundamental for machine learning algorithms. and inevitably disruptive impacts that For example, machines can generate AI will bring. precision medicine and rapid medical diagnosis. Treatment plans can then The tools of AI generate new data be evaluated and ‘fed back’ through and deploy existing data in a number the system thus creating the learning of different ways. The data provides machine. This kind of application the basis for new analytics and computer of learning machines is likely modelling. ‘Machines’ – computers to become more prevalent or networks of computers linked by in a range of different contexts. The agenda: impacts and ethics Ada’s first objective is to chart the impacts and the sharing economy, and security. of these technological developments on Combined, these benefits create smarter people and society. Since these are rooted urban (and rural) environments. in the data-driven AI economy, analysis will begin there. We will seek to understand the Individual benefits sit alongside social full capabilities of the technologies – for consequences. The impact of digital the present and, through horizon scanning, reforms in the justice system, for example, for their future potential. There are benefits raises concerns about the rights of the 4 to individuals directly – for example individual in relation to the state; and Uber, Ada Lovelace Institute Ada Lovelace through phone apps such as City Mapper though beneficial to customers, has led or direct connections to taxi services such to controversy relating to the workforce. as Uber – and in the delivery of a wide Individual autonomy is simultaneously range of services, for example in health, enhanced and challenged. education, justice, financial services, retail Ethical challenges These developments therefore inherently or, because of their training data, can be generate ethical challenges. The data and biased. Are the outcomes fair, and how can the algorithms have to be accurate and we test that? Are lines of what is acceptable reliable and we have to be aware of the being crossed? For example, while consequences of failings in this respect. marketing and electioneering were relatively Many benefits can only be delivered open, their methods, however contested, effectively through use of personal data, were not seen as a threat to the democratic with analytical power enhanced by linking process itself. But some contemporary of data from a variety of sources. This methods are now clearly unacceptable – raises issues of privacy and consent. because of their deliberately covert nature, Machine learning-constructed decisions, directing ‘fake’ news and information especially those based on ‘deep learning’ at targeted audiences to undermine the algorithms, are typically not transparent; basis of shared public debate. Understanding the impacts of innovation The speed at which these technologies data. In bringing together the disciplines change society, and the dynamism of the of social science and the humanities with markets they fuel, mean that neither the those of data and medical science and research communities, nor the designers technical innovators, Ada’s work will offer or developers have the space clearly to a deeper understanding of the impacts of articulate the conditions for a successful technological innovation as they play out AI-driven society. There is no shared across the very different strata and cultures discourse on how we can begin to measure of our increasingly complex, connected, and 5 or even account for the social value of fragmented society. Ensuring data
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