It's a minefield, it's power is potentially awesome, but what are the user-cases; how are you securing and anonymising data and where is the tipping point to evolve your organisation? In this roundtable we pushed theory to the side and asked who is using AI in anger?

 

We were delighted to recently host our first AI Roundtable in London lead by Senior Consultant, Amber Harrison and Technology Evangelist, David Savage.

 

It was amazing to bring together a range of Data and AI Leaders from across London to discuss a range of big questions regarding AI and using it within organisations.

 

The roundtable focused on the emergence of AI and data ethics, with these conversations being very timely given the real light that has been placed on AI since the release of Chat GPT and generative AI recently.

 

We opened up the event by introducing everyone in the room. We were delighted to be joined by a range of Senior Leaders in the AI space including Heads of Data Science, leaders in Data Engineering and Directors of Data from reputable financial services, media and oil and gas companies.

 

It was agreed, that we must evolve operational software development practices to ensure that designers, developers and deployers of automated systems take proactive measures to protect individuals from discrimination. AI has the power to cause irreversible damage for diverse and inclusive thought if we’re not careful.

 

Overall the key takeaways were as follows:

 

We shouldn’t fear AI and it’s potential. However we should be mindful and cautious of how and where we use it. We need to ensure we find a sustainable way to ensure that AI powered automation coexists with job creation and safeguards workers rights. The group also acknowledged the positives of AI and where it can be used to automate jobs and processes to give significant cost and time benefits to the organisation.

 

Good practice needs to be embedded into all organisations. Collectively we recognised the importance of this to drive AI corporate values and ethical underpinnings. We discussed whose responsibility this would be and how do we make sure this is being followed. Whilst weighing up the pros and cons we agreed that there are excellent benefits to AI and this shouldn’t go unrecognised amongst the dangers.

 

Finally, we discussed when and where we should trust AI to avoid blindly following whatever outcome it provides. What was clear from the roundtable discussion is that the vast majority of our attendees agreed that there should be tighter regulations in place but this shouldn’t be made in hast. The attendees were predominately from Financial Services and regulated industries and therefore recognised the negative implications of AI and where it can be used in anger. They also recognised, tighter regulation around data bias, security and privacy may stunt the innovation and progress of AI systems.

 

We would like to extend our thanks to all who attended the event and we look forward to hosting future discussions.

 

If you would like to find our more, please reach out to our team at Harvey Nash: Amber Harrison, Alexander Reeder, Akeesh Khokar, Harry Hargreaves, Kishan Shah and Matthew Holmes.