Ethics and Artificial Intelligence

Debate between Jo Swinson and Luke Graham

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jo Swinson]

I entirely concur; one of the long-standing rules of computer programming is “garbage in, garbage out”. That holds true here. Again, that is why transparency about what goes in is so important. I hope that the Minister will tell us what regulations are being considered to ensure that AI systems are designed in a way that is transparent, so that somebody can be held accountable, and how AI bias can be counteracted.

Increased transparency is crucial, but it is also vital that we put safeguards in place to make sure that that does not come at the cost of people’s privacy or security. Many AI systems have access to large datasets, which may contain confidential personal information or even information that is a matter of national security. Take, for example, an algorithm that is used to analyse medical records: we would not want that data to be accessible arbitrarily by third parties. The Government must be mindful of privacy considerations when tackling transparency, and they must look at ways of strengthening capacity for informed consent when it comes to the use of people’s personal details in AI systems.

We must ensure that AI systems are fair and free from bias. Returning to recruitment, algorithms are trained using historical data to develop a template of characteristics to target. The problem is that historical data itself often reveals pre-existing biases. Just a quarter of FTSE 350 directors are women, and fewer than one in 10 are from an ethnic minority; the majority of leaders are white men. It is therefore easy to see how companies’ use of hiring algorithms trained on past data about the characteristics of their leaders might reinforce existing gender and race imbalances.

The software company Sage has developed a code of practice for ethical AI. Its first principle stresses the need for AI to reflect the diversity of the users it serves. Importantly, that means ensuring that teams responsible for building AI are diverse. We all know that the computer science industry is heavily male dominated, so the people who develop AI systems are mainly men. It is not hard to see how that might have an impact on the fairness of new technology. Members may remember that Apple launched a health app that enabled people to do everything from tracking their inhaler use to tracking how much molybdenum they were getting from their soy beans, but did not allow someone to track their menstrual cycle.

We also need to be clear about who stands to benefit from new AI technology and to think about distributional effects. We want to avoid a situation where power and wealth lie exclusively in the hands of those with access to and understanding of these new technologies.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. It is reassuring that Liberal Democrat and Conservative Members are present to debate this important issue, albeit slightly disappointing that ours are the only parties represented. Will she join me in welcoming the centre for data ethics and innovation, which was announced in the Budget at the end of last year? Does she agree that it is important that whatever measures we take are UK-wide, so that statistics, ethics and the way we use data are standardised—to a very high standard—across the United Kingdom?

[Jo Swinson]

The hon. Gentleman, who is a fellow representative from Scotland, pre-empts the next section of my speech.

We need to develop good standards across the whole United Kingdom, but this issue in many ways transcends national boundaries. We must develop international consensus about how to deal with it, and I hope the UK takes a leading role in that. Parliament has started to look at the issue in recent years: the Select Committee on Science and Technology has produced a couple of reports about it, and the new House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence is already doing great work and collecting interesting evidence. The Government have perhaps been slow to engage properly with ethical questions, but I have strong hopes that that will change now that the Minister is in post.

I very much welcome the announcement in the Budget of a new centre for data ethics and innovation. That is a good start, albeit long overdue. I found that announcement while reading the Red Book during the Budget debate—it was on page 45—and I even welcomed it in my speech. I am not sure anyone else had noticed it. I would welcome a clear update from the Minister on the expected timeline for that centre to be up and running. Where does she expect it to be based? What about the recruitment of its chair and key members of staff? How does she see it playing a role in advising policy making and engaging with relevant stakeholders?

I am concerned that the major Government-commissioned report, “Growing the artificial intelligence industry in the UK”, which was published in October, entirely omitted ethical questions. It specifically said:

“Resolving ethical and societal questions is beyond the scope and the expertise of this industry-focused review, and could not in any case be resolved in our short time-frame.”

I say very strongly that ethical questions should not be an afterthought. They should not be an add-on or a “nice to have”. Ethical discourse should be properly embedded in policy thinking. It should be a fundamental part of growing the AI industry, and it must therefore be a key job of the centre for data ethics and innovation. The Government have an important role to play, but I hope that the centre will work closely with industry too, because the way that industry tackles this issue is vital.

Regulation is important, and there are probably some gaps in it that we need to fill and get right, but this issue cannot be solved by regulation alone. I am interested in the Minister’s thoughts about that. Every doctor who enters the medical profession must swear the Hippocratic oath. Perhaps a similar code or oath of professional ethics could be developed for people working in AI—let me float the idea that it could be called the Lovelace oath in memory of the mother of modern computing—to ensure that they recognise their responsibility to embed ethics in every decision they take. That needs to become part and parcel of the way industry works.

Before I conclude, let me touch briefly on an issue that is outside the Minister’s brief but is nevertheless important. I am deeply concerned about the potential for lethal autonomous weapons—weapons that can seek and attack targets without human intervention—to cause absolute devastation. The ability for an algorithm to decide who to kill, and the morality of that, should worry us all. I very much hope that the Minister will work closely with her colleagues in the Ministry of Defence. The UK needs to lead discussions with other countries to get international consensus on the production and regulation of such weapons—ideally a consensus that they should be stopped—and to ensure that ethics are considered throughout.

We want the UK to continue to be a world leader in artificial intelligence, but it is vital that we also lead the discussion and set international standards about its ethics, in conjunction with other countries. Technology does not respect international borders; this is a global issue. We should not underestimate the astonishing potential of AI—leading academics are already calling this the fourth industrial revolution—but we must not shirk from addressing the difficult questions. What we are doing is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough. We need to go further, faster. After all, technology is advancing at a speed we have not seen before. We cannot afford to sit back and watch. Ethics must be embedded in the way AI develops, and the United Kingdom should lead the way.

Leaving the EU: Consumer Protection

Debate between Jo Swinson and Luke Graham

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jo Swinson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Luke Graham]

I would like a few more minutes to develop my point.

The other legislative bulwark to consider is the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. The Bill will convert all EU law into UK law wherever practicable when the UK leaves the EU. In practice, that means that wherever UK law does not already legislate beyond the existing EU minimum requirement, that minimum requirement will become UK law the moment we leave the EU. I think I speak for most of my colleagues when I say that there is little appetite for lowering standards once we leave the EU. The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, in its current composition, is designed to provide consumers and businesses with continuity and to provide guarantees of consumer protections that are based on EU law and, as I mentioned earlier, UK law.

The UK leads not only in consumer rights and consumer protections, but in several international agreements where we are not in an official union. One example is the base erosion and profit shifting initiative that is being pursued through the OECD, where the UK has played a leading role in helping to strengthen tax avoidance measures around the globe. That proves to Opposition Members that we do not have to be in a formal union to do the right thing and promote consumer and institutional interests around the world.

[Jo Swinson]

I welcomed the hon. Gentleman’s praise for the Consumer Rights Act, which he rightly says was introduced during the 2010 to 15 Parliament. As the Liberal Democrat Minister who introduced that measure, in a Department led by a Liberal Democrat Secretary of State, I gently say to him that it was not just a Conservative achievement.

[Luke Graham]

I did say Conservative-led, but quite right—the coalition did a number of good things.