Top takeaways from TechUK Digital Ethics Event

16 Jan

👉 Thanks to techUK for an excellent Digital Ethics Summit. Refreshing to see people thinking deeply about this topic.

💡 Here are our top takeaways.

✅ Learning from mistakes.
Panellists argued for a shift towards responsible innovation. The 'Move fast, Break things' approach is no longer suitable. Furthermore, Good business is quickly becoming a USP, e.g. digital advertisers wanting to go beyond the legal requirements. Who decides what a mistake is? Recommendations for developing an ethical framework. 1. Start risk mapping. 2. Pick a focus to apply values and principles. 3. Align rules to mitigate.

✅ Balancing socialised risk and privatisation benefits
Starting with the question of who benefits from the technology makes it easier to discuss data bias and mitigates any narrow framing. We're stuck in a recurring hype cycle, which is counter-intuitive and leads to inflated expectations and attempts to privatise progress. It requires greater honesty of possibility. The government needs to regulate outcomes rather than AI.

✅ Role of AI standards in increasing public trust.
What are user rights? Who controls the controllers? The governance of digital is the challenge, not the technology. There is substantial public scepticism on who benefits from AI. Ethics-based reporting and regulation (vocabulary, standards and metrics) are required to lead change and manage the social contract. Otherwise, we risk complacency. Trust is fluid.

✅ How can technology breakthroughs truly benefit humanity
Positive examples include modelling climate change and tackling global financial fraud. Adoption blockers are people who don't see the value or trade-off. The medical field offered valuable learnings, such as developing synthetic datasets to mirror clinical outcomes or new models for organisations building new standards and researching topics with minimal user understanding. Recommendations: 1. Have an ethical framework for SMEs. 2. Access data resources safely. 3. Make ethics easier and more aspirational. 4. Get guardrails right alongside greater co-creation, and 5. effective communication of possibility and progress.