UK parliamentary committee issues recommendations on AI

The Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the UK House of Lords published a report summarising the results of its inquiry into the economic, ethical, and social implications of AI (carried out between June 2017 and March 2018). The report, titled ‘AI in the UK: Ready, willing and able’, contains a series of recommendations to support the UK government and other stakeholders in ‘realising the potential of AI for society and economy, and to protect society from potential threats and risks’. Among them, the Committee proposed five key principles to to guide the development of ethical AI: (1) AI should be developed for the common good and benefit of humanity; (2) AI should operate on principles of intelligibility and fairness; (3) AI should not be used to diminish the data rights or privacy of individuals, families or communities; (4) all citizens have the right to be educated to enable them to flourish mentally, emotionally and economically alongside AI; and (5) the autonomous power to hurt, destroy or deceive human beings should never be vested in AI. It is also the view of the Committee that ‘AI-specific regulation is not appropriate at this stage’ and that existing regulators should be given the adequate resources and powers to regulate AI.