Women in business discuss how to keep AI grounded
What happens when you get a group of inspirational women together in one room to chat about AI? You get a room full of expertise, and experience, buzzing with ideas on how to keep AI grounded.
We recently had the pleasure of hosting an International Women’s Forum event with inspiring leaders who did just that. Here’s a wrap-up of the conversation.
“As a relentless digester of information, AI has the power to reveal small patterns and variations in data.”
AI is already all around us. It’s the Netflix recommendation of new content based on what you have seen previously, facial recognition to get into internet banking and Google Maps getting you to a destination — it’s everywhere. Using powerful machine learning algorithms, AI can help make sense of massive amounts of information quickly and accurately. It reveals small patterns that can give businesses and society useful insights.
“What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? AI isn’t always the answer, but it could be an enabler”
It’s easy to go straight to AI for answers, instead, we should hold off. It’s not about creating a new AI strategy either. Leaders should think of AI as another tool to solve existing problems, and then think about the problem they are trying to solve. That’s a good place to start.
“The potential of AI is boundless. It needs to be applied with ethical constraints so that it doesn’t lead to detrimental outcomes.”
Businesses need to notice and be aware of those dark holes, such as operational, regulatory, competency, customer privacy, data quality, accountability and bias. When it comes to developing and implementing AI tech into a business, it is vital first to create a robust ethical framework around it.
“We know there needs to be an ethical framework around it, and people need to be at the heart of it.”
To truly realise the benefits of AI, a multidisciplinary approach is essential. This involves tech developers, business leaders, ethicists, social scientists, and the general public collaborating to shape the AI narrative. When these diverse stakeholders come together, the AI solutions produced are more holistic, ethically sound, and aligned with societal needs.
“AI, which learns from existing data, is largely based on male design.”
Despite advancements, AI has some inherent bias built in. It’s a breeding ground for reinforcing existing biases that is easily propagated when most AI developers worldwide are male. Technology designed and built almost exclusively by men can become skewed to represent their individual experiences.
There needs to be an emphasis on the value of transparency and the need for diverse teams to mitigate inherent biases in AI systems. It is also critical that ethics boards consist of diverse teams.
“Regulation — who is doing it?”
The government recently held an AI Summit and set out the National AI Strategy, where they committed to developing a pro-innovation national position on governing and regulating AI. Before it came high up on the Government agenda, it was very much in the hands of businesses to take proactive steps to regulate AI and establish ethics boards.
In the interim of any action, there are still huge concerns about the power of big tech companies to regulate themselves. They have a global reach and tend to base themselves in places where regulation is overlooked. Tech giants need to slow down and collaborate with the Government to design the technology ethically and responsibly.
“Investing in research will always give you a return. You will always learn something.”
What is the rush? Businesses don’t need to rush, but they need to focus. If they don’t progress, others will do it regardless. It’s not about being ready for AI tomorrow, it’s about investing in research, learning something new and working on those learnings.
Magnetic has worked with a number of companies to help understand how to embrace new technology. Fancy a coffee? Get in touch with Jenny Burns: jenny.burns@wearemagnetic.com
