Regulate to innovate - new report
Trust thought for today - the importance of considering societal trust in regulation of AI. Thoughts here for the White Paper on AI Regulation.
Here is an excellent report from Ada Lovelace Institute with strong recommendations on regulation for AI and a nice little section on what regulation does and is - congratulations Harry Farmer. Regulate to Innovate Report
The missing bit for me, as you would expect, is a section about the regulation earning societal trust in its own right. (All about that on www.tigtech.org) There is a section on trust and legitimacy which mentions inclusion, transparency etc, but not for our benefit. So for the White Paper on governance of AI, let me propose the following:
1. The Regulators of AI should consider the importance of earning public trust in the governance as well as using the governance to earn trust in the use of AI which now reaches all aspects of our lives.
2. The public trusts regulation when they know it is there and what it's doing and want to see when it does it's job and and that wrong doers are exposed and penalised. When they are toothless (eg with financial firms post-crash) trust is lost.
3. The biggest cause of distrust in governance is that it is seen to smooth the path of innovation to prioritise making money at expensive of people and planet. As the report says, regulatory innovation is needed. Old school rules will still be important in some areas, but new approaches are needed. They will perhaps even more need to earn trust than the traditional 'iron fist' approach.
4. People only know governce is there and working if regulators make the effort to communicate what they are doing, when there are problems and what they are doing to rectify the situation in an open and honest way. (No coincidence that the most trusted regulators FSA & HFEA have the best websites and most inclusive and open processes).
5. A systematic approach to the involvement of citizens and stakeholders is needed. The use of AI involves plenty of ethical dilemmas that are not for small numbers of people in offices to decide on. A more collaborative, inclusive approach is needed, with the involvement of citizens. At the moment it is left to ad hoc approaches mostly from Ada Lovelace and sometimes CDEI. This needs to change.
6. Consider the real role of a regulator. I love PA Consulting's proposal in their report Rethinking Regulators that regulators need to change from being 'Watchdogs of industry to champion's of the public'. Here's to that. Let's see it happen!