There's Nothing Intelligent About The Government's Approach To AI Either

Surprise! The UK government's under-funded, shambolic approach to public services also extends to the public sector's use of artificial intelligence. Ministers are no doubt piling the pressure on officials with demands for 'announcements' and other soundbites. But amid concerns that even major online platforms are failing to adequately mitigate the risks - not to mention this government's record for explosively bad news - you'd have thought they'd tread more carefully.

Despite 60 of the 87 public bodies either using or planning to use AI, the National Audit Office reports a lack of governance, accountability, funding, implementation plans and performance measures. 

There are also "difficulties attracting and retaining staff with AI skills, and lack of clarity around legal liability... concerns about risks of unreliable or inaccurate outputs from AI, for example due to bias and discrimination, and risks to privacy, data protection, [and] cyber security." 

The full report is here.

Amid concerns that the major online platforms are also failing to adequately mitigate the risks of generative AI (among other things), you'd have thought that government would be more concerned to approach the use of AI technologies responsibly.

But, no...

For what it's worth, here's my post on AI risk management (recently re-published by SCL).

Of Living The iLife, Dinosaurs and Data Portability

I'm not here to sound the death knell for Apple, but the announcement of the iCloud is a defining moment in the company's development. Will it remain a facilitator, or become an institution that exists only to ensure its own survival?

The 'cloud' or utility model for computing is not new. In fact, consumers have arguably held their data and basic applications 'in the cloud' ever since adopting public email services, blogging services and so on. What's new about the iCloud is the automated way in which all a consumer's content may be synchornised and otherwise 'managed' across all the consumer's (Apple) devices.

Seen from a hi-tech standpoint, Apple's move is typically bold and innovative. Yet the centralised omnipotence this may hand to Apple seems an attempt to reverse a 20 year trend toward enabling consumers to control their own data. In this sense, the iCloud appears to be the sort of product a major bank or telco 'dinosaur' would introduce in a last ditch effort to survive by locking-in its customers - and just imagine the complaints there'd be, given the switching challenges for consumers in those markets. So data portability is absolutely critical (along with personal data protection and security), if the iCloud is to be seen as a consumer 'enabler' rather than a predatory move by an aging institution.

But does the mainstream consider data portability to be important? I mean, I'd like to think that Apple's early, tech-savvy customer base would realise it's a bad idea to hold all your applications and data with a single provider, just as financially savvy folk realise the benefit of a fully-diversified investment portfolio. I have an iPhone and an iTunes account; but I also have a Toshiba laptop and a Dell PC. Those computers run Microsoft's Windows and Office package, and I have a Hotmail address; but I very deliberately browse with Firefox, blog via Blogger (Google), Tweet, hang out on Facebook and follow various blogs using Netvibes. And I use Spotify, not iTunes, as my main music service. In other words, I'm not going to let any one provider see, process, hold or control all my data - or even have a complete back-up or copy. That would feel closed and controlling, rather than enabling.

But, ironically, I suspect many people in the mainstream will see the need for software service diversity as a hassle or a problem to be solved by a single service provider, which is why Apple may quite genuinely see a market for the iCloud.

Does that make Apple a genuine facilitator or a dinosaur that's spotted a meal?

Image from eBandit.

Two Stones, One Bird?

Convenience.

Because most web sites with anything remotely important on them seem to require log-in codes, I keep many different usernames and passwords in my head. Apparently, the average person uses 12 (Independent Extra, 21.11.07, p.8). That's nothing compared to the many phone numbers that we used to remember before we began relying on the directory in our mobile phones and laptops, or Skype. But it hardly aids freedom of movement around the web.

To ease my passage, so to speak, the (worryingly named) Open ID programme would have me replace all my passcodes with a single ID. It would sit in a database somewhere to be checked when I access each participating web site.

Cue another standards battle, and Round 10 between Google, Microsoft et al.

But the people working on the semantic web would say that I shouldn't have to move around the web at all. Their goal is making information "understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web". As I recall the explanation of Dr Nick Gibbins (School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton) at the SCL's Law 2.0 event in September, the key issues are trust and provenance in the information which the computers are being made to understand. Both vary according to the source, time and context in which the information is given, as well as the content itself. You trust Prof Lillian Edwards' view of privacy law, but not her tips on car repair. But rather than drawing on a single ID in a single (hackable) repository somewhere, the computers would rely on a whole range of circumstantial evidence to confirm that the data in question is likely to be true and relevant to you - or in a log-in scenario, that the person whose computer is trying to gain access to a database is you.

Cue another massive battle over standards, but also over ontologies, taxonomies and other elements of the semantic web that are worthy of such top-draw words.

I guess that Open ID may be a stepping stone along the way to the semantic web, in which case we should get on with it. But that does seem like two stones for the one bird. Whereas the semantic web promises convenience without humans having to do all the moving around - so two birds with one stone.

I know which sounds better.