AI as a force for good: realizing the benefits through openness and transparency
In this blog, Craig Civil, Director of Data Science and AI, looks at some of the steps we can take to help ensure AI positively shapes a better society for everyone and accelerates progress towards a sustainable world.
Changing lives
One of the biggest conversations of our time is around AI and how we can accelerate its adoption to help save lives, shape the way we work, boost efficiency, and accelerate innovation.
From image recognition to linguistic understanding or speedy analysis of MRI scans, AI covers a broad spectrum of technologies, which are opening up a vast scope of possibilities for humanity.
In BSI's Trust in AI Poll1, when asked how they would like to see AI shaping our future, people around the world welcome the use of AI to accelerate positive impacts:
- 52% feeling excited about how AI can shape a better future for everyone by improving the accuracy of medical diagnosis
- 52% say AI can help create a more energy-efficient built environment.
- 49% welcome help from the technology in reducing food waste.
- 28% of people prioritized AI for making it easier for doctors to diagnose medical conditions.
- 23% see AI helping to reduce social inequality as a priority.
- 17% prioritize AI's role in improving education.
Nevertheless, there are low levels of trust globally – for example, just a quarter have more confidence in AI than people to detect food contamination issues, 69% say patients need to be made aware AI tools are being used in diagnosis or treatment, and 57% feel vulnerable consumers need protections around AI.
AI is not magic, but for it to drive progress across society in a myriad of positive ways, its adoption must be led by humans, and be effectively managed and well-governed.
People and data are crucial.
Underpinning all AI technology is a plethora of skilled people who have coded it, loaded it with data for training, developed and then tested it with users so it can serve a credible and useful purpose. The objective is for AI to be a useful tool that has a positive impact on both those who are developing it and those who are using it. Using good quality data, AI can also open up vast possibilities.
Take the changing climate and protecting the planet as an example. The climate can be viewed as one big data system, providing myriad data points daily. AI can gather and analyze this data in a useful and rapid way, identifying, prioritizing, and tracking not only the changes needed to mitigate the effects of climate change but also the means to measure and predict the success of an organization's sustainability initiatives.
A good example is The UN Environment Program's World Environment Situation Room, launched in 2022 to curate, aggregate and visualize the best available earth observation and sensor data. It is able to perform near real-time analysis and make predictions based on factors such as CO2 atmospheric concentration, changes in glacier mass and sea level rise.
In healthcare, too, AI is primed to shape our future in a positive way, with 52% of people excited about how AI can improve the accuracy of medical diagnosis. This could be using AI to assess scans and identify cell anomalies, enabling the highly skilled medic to focus on treating anomalies when they arise. As a specific example, Google Health, DeepMind, the NHS, Northwestern University, and Imperial College, London have already partnered to create an AI model able to spot breast cancer on X-ray images.
The Covid-19 vaccine is another recent example of where AI was used for good to rapidly synthesize information to model the vaccine and develop new drug interventions. AI algorithms and robotic automation allowed Moderna to move from producing around 30 mRNAs (a molecule fundamental to the development of the vaccine) each month, to around 1000 mRNAs.
What unites all these examples is the large volume of high-quality data that is used to train the AI model, working in harmony with skilled human technicians. The old adage ‘garbage in, garbage out' holds true, particularly in terms of the data used to create AI models.
Protecting the most vulnerable
It is the human support (sometimes referred to as 'human-in-the-loop') that is a key guardrail.
As an example, if organizations use AI to filter job applications, it is critical that the process has safeguards and is transparent to its participants. Technology might be able to do the job, but a human training the AI to do it brings with them implicit (and sometimes explicit) biases that can feed through the process. That is unless the code is rigorously reviewed.
A risk-based approach would be aware of the possible flaws in an AI system, such as with facial recognition software, and would then also be able to redress this within the code.
AI can be used to correct institutional biases like this. In fact, with the right data and good governance, AI has the potential to positively transform people's lives.
Going back to Covid for another example, the UK Health Security Agency was able to identify, and advise to shield, an additional 1.7 million people as Clinically Extremely Vulnerable, by feeding technology consultancy BJSS and Oxford University’s AI-based risk prediction model QCovid with NHS patient data. While we can hope that this specific situation won’t come up again, understanding AI’s role in such a life-changing scenario helps bolster confidence in its use, which could be vital for the future.
The opportunity for AI to be a force for good for society is immense. To bring that goodness to fruition requires openness, transparency and trust. As people understand the potential of AI and their power to use it as a tool, embedding guardrails and building greater trust is critical.
This content is from BSI's Shaping Society 5.0 campaign. Download Craig's full essay here or access others in the collection here.
Craig Civil, Director of Data Science and AI, BSI
Craig is an experienced data and digital professional within the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), data innovation, data science, data operations and data strategy. He has over 30 years’ experience working with data across multiple industry sectors both in the public and private sectors and different geographic locations including the UK, Europe, the USA and Australia.
Craig is a senior member of the Management Team driving progress for a better society and more sustainable world by demonstrating strategic leadership, commercial acumen and product innovation.
1. BSI partnered with Censuswide to survey 10,144 adults across nine markets (Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Netherlands, UK, and the US) between 23rd and 29th August 2023.
