The Road to Accountable AI

The UK is in a unique position in the global AI landscape. It is home to important AI development labs and corporate AI adopters, but its regulatory regime is distinct from both the US and the European Union. In this episode, Kevin Werbach sits down with Jessica Leonard, the Chief Strategy and External Affairs Officer at the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Jessica discusses the CMA's role in shaping AI policy against the backdrop of a shifting political and economic landscape, and how it balances promoting innovation with competition and consumer protection. She highlights the guiding principles that the CMA has established to ensure a fair and competitive AI ecosystem, and how they are designed to establish trust and fair practices across the industry. Jessica Lennard took up the role of Chief Strategy & External Affairs Officer at the CMA in August 2023. Jessica is a member of the Senior Executive Team, an advisor to the Board, and has overall responsibility for Strategy, Communications and External Engagement at the CMA. Previously, she was a Senior Director for Global Data and AI Initiatives at VISA. She also served as an Advisory Board Member for the UK Government Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation.  Competition and Markets Authority CMA AI Strategic Update (April 2024)

In this episode, Kevin speaks with with the influential tech thinker Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media and popularizer of terms such as open source and Web 2.0. O'Reilly, who co-leads the AI Disclosures Project at the Social Science Research Council, offers an insightful and historically-informed take on AI governance. Tim and Kevin first explore the evolution of AI, tracing its roots from early computing innovations like ENIAC to its current transformative role Tim notes the centralization of AI development, the critical role of data access, and the costs of creating advanced models. The conversation then delves into AI ethics and safety, covering issues like fairness, transparency, bias, and the need for robust regulatory frameworks. They also examine the potential for distributed AI systems, cooperative models, and industry-specific applications that leverage specialized datasets. Finally, Tim and Kevin highlight the opportunities and risks inherent in AI's rapid growth, urging collaboration, accountability, and innovative thinking to shape a sustainable and equitable future for the technology. Tim O’Reilly is the founder, CEO, and Chairman of O’Reilly Media, which delivers online learning, publishes books, and runs conferences about cutting-edge technology, and has a history of convening conversations that reshape the computer industry. Tim is also a partner at early stage venture firm O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and on the boards of Code for America, PeerJ, Civis Analytics, and PopVox. He is the author of many technical books published by O’Reilly Media, and most recently WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us (Harper Business, 2017).  SSRC, AI Disclosures Project Asimov's Addendum Substack The First Step to Proper AI Regulation Is to Make Companies Fully Disclose the Risks

Join Professor Werbach in his conversation with Alice Xiang, Global Head of AI Ethics at Sony and Lead Research Scientist at Sony AI. With both a research and corporate background, Alice provides an inside look at how her team integrates AI ethics across Sony's diverse business units. She explains how the evolving landscape of AI ethics is both a challenge and an opportunity for organizations to reposition themselves as the world embraces AI. Alice discusses fairness, bias, and incorporating these ethical ideas in practical business environments. She emphasizes the importance of collaboration, transparency, and diveristy in embedding a culture of accountable AI at Sony, showing other organizations how they can do the same.  Alice Xiang manages the team responsible for conducting AI ethics assessments across Sony's business units and implementing Sony's AI Ethics Guidelines. She also recently served as a General Chair for the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), the premier multidisciplinary research conference on these topics. Alice previously served on the leadership team of the Partnership on AI. She was a Visiting Scholar at Tsinghua University’s Yau Mathematical Sciences Center, where she taught a course on Algorithmic Fairness, Causal Inference, and the Law. Her work has been quoted in a variety of high profile journals and published in top machine learning conferences, journals, and law reviews.  Sony AI Flagship Project Augmented Datasheets for Speech Datasets and Ethical Decision-Making by Alice Xiang and Others  

Kevin Werbach speaks with Krishna Gade, founder and CEO of Fiddler AI, on the the state of explainability for AI models. One of the big challenges of contemporary AI is understanding just why a system generated a certain output. Fiddler is one of the startups offering tools that help developers and deployers of AI understand what exactly is going on.  In the conversation, Kevin and Krishna explore the importance of explainability in building trust with consumers, companies, and developers, and then dive into the mechanics of Fiddler's approach to the problem. The conversation covers current and potential regulations that mandate or incentivize explainability, and the prospects for AI explainability standards as AI models grow in complexity. Krishna distinguishes explainability from the broader process of observability, including the necessity of maintaining model accuracy through different times and contexts. Finally, Kevin and Krishna discuss the need for proactive AI model monitoring to mitigate business risks and engage stakeholders.  Krishna Gade is the founder and CEO of Fiddler AI, an AI Observability startup, which focuses on monitoring, explainability, fairness, and governance for predictive and generative models. An entrepreneur and engineering leader with strong technical experience in creating scalable platforms and delightful products,Krishna previously held senior engineering leadership roles at Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Microsoft. At Facebook, Krishna led the News Feed Ranking Platform that created the infrastructure for ranking content in News Feed and powered use-cases like Facebook Stories and user recommendations.   Fiddler.Ai How Explainable AI Keeps Decision-Making Algorithms Understandable, Efficient, and Trustworthy - Krishna Gade x Intelligent Automation Radio