Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD) I beg to move,
That this House has considered ethics and Artificial
Intelligence. It is a pleasure to serve under your
chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I welcome the Minister to her new role,
following the reshuffle last week. She leaves what was also a
wonderful role in Government—I can say that from personal
experience—but I am sure that she will find the challenges of this
portfolio interesting and...Request free
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(East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered ethics and Artificial
Intelligence.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I
welcome the Minister to her new role, following the reshuffle
last week. She leaves what was also a wonderful role in
Government—I can say that from personal experience—but I am sure
that she will find the challenges of this portfolio interesting
and engaging. No doubt she is already getting stuck in.
I would like to start with the story of Tay. Tay was
an Artificial Intelligence Twitter chatbot
developed by Microsoft in 2016. She was designed to mimic the
language of young Twitter users and to engage and entertain
millennials through casual and playful conversation.
“The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets”,
the company boasted. In reality, Tay was soon corrupted by the
Twitter community. Tay began to unleash a torrent of sexist
profanity. One user asked,
“Do you support genocide?”,
to which Tay gaily replied, “I do indeed.” Another asked,
“is Ricky Gervais an atheist?”
The reply was,
“ricky gervais learned totalitarianism from adolf hitler, the
inventor of atheism”.
Those are some of the tamer tweets. Less than 24 hours after her
launch, Microsoft closed her account. Reading about it at the
time, I found the story of Tay an amusing reminder of the hubris
of tech companies. It also reveals something darker: it vividly
demonstrates the potential for abuse and misuse of Artificial Intelligence technologies and
the serious moral dilemmas that they present.
I say at the outset that I believe Artificial Intelligence can be a force
for good, if harnessed correctly. It has the potential to change
lives, to empower and to drive innovation. In healthcare, the use
of AI is already revolutionising the way health professionals
diagnose and treat disease. In transport, the rise of autonomous
vehicles could drastically reduce the number of road deaths and
provide incredible new opportunities for millions of disabled
people. In our everyday lives, new AI technologies are
streamlining menial tasks, giving us more time in the day for
meaningful work, for leisure or for our family and friends. We
are on the cusp of something quite extraordinary and we should
not aim deliberately to suppress the growth of new AI, but there
are pressing moral questions to be answered before we jump head
first into AI excitement. It is vital that we address those
urgent ethical challenges presented by new technology.
I will focus on four important ethical requirements that should
guide our policy making in this area: transparency,
accountability, privacy and fairness. I stress that the story of
Tay is not an anomaly; it is one example of a growing number of
deeply disturbing instances that offer a window into the many and
varied ethical challenges posed by advances in AI. How should we
react when we hear than an algorithm used by a Florida county
court to predict the likelihood of criminals reoffending, and
therefore to influence sentencing decisions, was almost twice as
likely to wrongly flag black defendants as future criminals?
-
(North East Derbyshire)
(Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on this debate; it is a
fascinating area and I am grateful to be able to speak. On
her last point, I understand that in parts of the United
States where that technology is used, there are instances
where the judges go one step further and rely on those
decisions as reasons to do things. The decision is made on
incorrect information in the first instance, and then judges
say that because a machine has made that decision, it must be
even better than manual intervention.
-
The hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise that concern,
because that goes to the heart of the issue, particularly
when risk data is presented as incontrovertible fact and is
relied on for the decision. It is absolutely essential that
those decisions can be interrogated and understood, and that
any bias is identified. That is why ethics must be at the
heart of this whole issue, even before systems are developed
in the first place.
In addition to the likely reoffending data, there is a female
sex robot designed with a “frigid” setting, which is
programmed to resist sexual advances. We have heard about a
beauty contest judged by robots that did not like the
contestants with darker skin. A report by PwC suggests that
up to three in 10 jobs in this country could be automated by
the early 2030s. We have read about children watching a video
on YouTube of Peppa Pig being tortured at the dentist, which
had been suggested by the website’s autoplay algorithm. In
every one of those cases, we have a right to be concerned. AI
systems are making decisions that we find shocking and
unethical. Many of us will feel a lack of trust and a loss of
control.
On machine learning, a report last year by the Royal Society
highlighted a range of concerns among members of the public.
Some were worried about the potential for direct harm, from
accidents in autonomous vehicles to the misdiagnosis of
disease in healthcare. Others were more concerned about
potential job losses or the perceived loss of humanity that
could result from wider use of machine learning. The
importance of public engagement and dialogue was acknowledged
by the Minister’s Department in its 2016 report. I would
welcome an update from her on the kind of public engagement
work she thinks is important with regard to AI.
I will turn to the related considerations of transparency and
accountability. When we talk about transparency in the
context of AI, what we really mean is that we want to
understand how AI systems think and to understand their
decision-making processes. We want to avoid situations of
“black-boxing”, where we cannot understand, access or explain
the decisions that technology makes. In practice, that
transparency means several things: it might involve creating
logging mechanisms that give us a step-by-step account of the
processes involved in the decision making; or it could mean
providing greater visibility of data access. I would be
interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on the relative
merits of those practices. Either way, transparency is
particularly important for those instances when we want to
challenge decisions made by AI systems. Transparency informs
accountability. If we can see how decisions are made, it is
easier for us to understand what has happened and who is
responsible when things go wrong.
Increasingly, major companies such as Deutsche Bank and
Citigroup are turning to machine learning algorithms to
streamline and refine their recruitment processes. Let us
suppose that we suspect that an algorithm is biased towards
candidates of a particular race and gender. If the
decision-making process of the algorithm is opaque, it is
hard to even work out whether employment law is being
broken—an issue I know will be close to the Minister’s heart.
Transparency is crucial when it comes to the accountability
of new AI. We must ensure that when things go wrong, people
can be held accountable, rather than shrugging and responding
that the computer says “don’t know”.
-
I will try not to intervene too much, but the point about
transparency in the process and the decision making relates
to the data that is used as an input. It is often the case in
these instances that machine learning is simply about
correlations and patterns in a wide scheme of data. If that
data is not right in the first instance, subjective and
inaccurate decisions are created.
-
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.
-
(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 standardise—to a very high
standard—across the United Kingdom?
-
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 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.
11.17 am
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The Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media
and Sport (Margot James)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame
Cheryl. I congratulate the hon. Member for East
Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) on securing this important debate
and on her fascinating and well-argued speech. As she kindly
pointed out, I am new to the position of Minister for digital
and creative industries. She will know from her ministerial
experience that there is a great deal to absorb in any new
brief, and I thank her for this opportunity to get involved
and absorbed in the ethical considerations of Artificial Intelligence so early in
my new role.
We understand the disruptive potential of transformative
technologies, and we stand ready for the adoption of AI,
which is going on around us and is important to the future of
our industrial strategy. In their review of AI and the
industrial strategy, Dame Wendy Hall and Jérôme Pesenti
identified a range of opportunities for the UK to build and
grow its AI capacity. The forthcoming AI sector deal will
take forward their key recommendations about skills and data,
and a wider AI grand challenge will keep the UK at the
forefront of AI technology and the wider data revolution.
Those ambitions will be underpinned by a new Government
office for AI. We are building the capacity to address the
issues that accompany these technological advancements:
issues of trust, ethics and governance; effective take-up by
business and consumers; and the transition of skills and
labour requirements.
Regarding trust, AI already delivers a wide range of
benefits, from healthcare to logistics, biodiversity and
business, but we are fully aware that AI brings new
challenges, as the hon. Lady mentioned, in privacy,
accountability and transparency as well as the important
issue of bias, on which she shared a number of concerning
examples with the House.
The uses of data in AI and machine learning are developing in
valuable but potentially unsettling ways, because of the pace
of adoption, as the hon. Lady outlined. We have different
concerns and tolerances about trust and fairness depending on
the application of AI, varying, for instance, between retail,
finance and medicine. We will need to consider specific
answers to those challenges in the different sectors if we
are to foster the necessary level of trust. Confidence and
trust are essential to driving adoption and innovation.
We must ensure that these new technologies work for the
benefit of everyone: citizens, businesses and wider society.
We are therefore integrating strong privacy protections and
accountability into how automated decisions affect users. A
strong, effective regulatory regime is therefore vital. In
the UK we already benefit from the Information Commissioner’s
Office, a well-respected independent body tasked with
protecting personal data. Important decisions on everything
from autonomous cars to medical diagnosis and decisions on
finance and sentencing—and indeed applications to
defence—cannot be delegated solely to algorithms. Human
judgment and oversight remain essential.
-
I completely accept the principle that strong regulation is
required for data, and it is important that organisations
such as the ICO lead that—even if I have some concerns about
some of what has come out on the general data protection
regulation in recent months. Is it not the responsibility of
all of us here, the ICO, Ministers and wider civic society to
start discussing privacy more over the long term? We have
probably got to have a cultural discussion about privacy,
because we have ownership of data, but to accrue the benefits
that come from some automation and Artificial Intelligence we must also
be willing to give over some elements of that data for the
wider good.
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My hon. Friend touches on some important considerations.
There has been a debate in healthcare on how much should be
private and how much should be anonymised and shared for the
general good, as he outlines. I agree that that discussion
needs to involve citizens, business, policy makers and
technology specialists.
We will introduce a digital charter, which will underpin the
policies and actions needed to drive innovation and growth
while making the UK the safest and fairest place to be
online. A key pillar of the charter will be the centre for
data ethics and innovation, which will look ahead to advise
Government and regulators on the best means of stewarding
ethical, safe and innovative uses of AI and all data, not
just personal data. It will be for the chair of the centre to
decide how they should engage with their stakeholders and
build a wider discussion, as my hon. Friend suggested is
necessary. We expect that they will want to engage with
academia, industry, civil society and indeed the wider public
to build the future frameworks in which AI technology can
thrive and innovate safely.
We may find the solutions to many AI challenges in particular
sectors by making sure that, with the right tools,
application of the existing rules can keep up, rather than
requiring completely new rules just for AI. We all need to
identify and understand the ethical and governance challenges
posed by uses of such a new data source and decision-making
process, now and in the future. We must then determine how
best to identify appropriate rules, establish new norms and
evolve policy and regulations.
When it comes to AI take-up and adoption, we need senior
decision makers in business and the public sector first to
understand and then discuss the opportunities and
implications of AI. We want to see high-skill, well-paid jobs
created, but we also want the benefits of AI, as a group of
new general-purpose technologies, to be felt across the whole
economy and by citizens in their private lives. The
Government are therefore working closely with industry
towards that end. As I said earlier, we will establish a new
AI council to act as a leadership body and, in partnership
with Government, champion adoption across the whole economy.
Further support will come from Tech Nation as it establishes
a national network of hubs to support such growth.
A highly skilled and diverse workforce is critical to growing
AI in the UK. We therefore support the tech talent charter
initiative to gain commitment to greater workforce diversity.
The hon. Lady explained well in her speech why diversity in
the tech workforce is important to the ethical considerations
we are debating. As we expand our base of world-class AI
experts by investing in 200 new AI PhDs and AI fellowships
through the Alan Turing Institute, we will still need to
attract the best and brightest people from around the world,
so we have doubled the amount of exceptional talent visas to
2,000. I will take the point about the need for diversity
when it comes to reviewing such applications. All of that
will ensure that UK businesses have a workforce ready to
shape the coming opportunities.
With regard to transition, we will see strong adaptation in
our labour markets, where our aim should be lifelong learning
opportunities to help people adapt to the changing pace of
technology, which will bring new jobs and productivity gains.
We must hope that those will increase employment. We know
that some jobs may be displaced, and often for good reasons:
dangerous, repetitive or tedious parts of work can now be
carried out more quickly, accurately and safely by machines.
None the less, human judgment and creativity will still be
required to design and manage them.
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On employment, may I impress on the Minister that in that
disruption, the Government should be there to help some of
those workers pushed out of employment to retrain and find a
new place and role in the economy, keeping up with the pace
of technology as it develops?
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I heartily agree with my hon. Friend. He will be pleased to
know that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy—my former Department—is working closely with
to consult on all
of his recommendations. The Secretary of State has taken
personal responsibility for improving the quality of work.
Work should be good and rewarding.
A study from last year suggests that digital technologies
including AI can create a net total of 80,000 new jobs
annually for a country such as the UK. We want people to be
able to capitalise on those opportunities, as my hon. Friend
suggested. We already have a resilient and diverse labour
market, which has adapted well to automation, creating more,
higher paying jobs at low risk of automation. However, as the
workplace continues to change, people must be equipped to
adapt to it easily. Many roles, rather being directly
replaced, will evolve to incorporate new technologies.
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The Minister has mentioned the centre for data ethics. Can
she update us on when it is likely to be up and running, what
the timetable is for recruiting the chair and so on? It would
be helpful to know when we can expect that.
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We want to proceed at pace, because it is an important part
of our programme of dealing with the ethics of this issue. We
plan to consult on the plans for a permanent centre in the
next few months, and I will welcome the hon. Lady’s input.
Undeniably, substantial changes lie ahead. Therefore, in
terms of enabling people to reskill and take advantage of the
changes and opportunities in the workplace, a national
retraining scheme will help people. We also have plans to
upskill 8,000 computer science teachers and work with
industry to set up a new national centre for computing
education, with a brief to encourage more girls to take
advantage of the new technologies in their learning.
Substantial changes lie ahead and, as we push these new
technologies, we will also strive to keep people and
businesses sufficiently skilled, adaptable and assured. The
measures are in place, and I have taken heart from the hon.
Lady’s speech about the importance of these ethical
considerations. I assure her that they will be uppermost in
our minds as we develop policy.
Question put and agreed to.
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