MORE THAN
15
Technology
MEETS THE AI
Simon Clayton, author of Blog.ChiefIdeasOfficer.com
and chief ideas officer at RefTech, suggests AI isn’t as
secure as some make out
The term AI is starting to pop up
everywhere. There are now many
marketing and event apps and
platforms that use the promise of
AI to do all sorts of wonderful
things for your events. I say
‘promise’ because I have a
sneaking suspicion that they don’t
use AI at all, and that it’s just
normal programming.
Unfortunately, AI seems to have
become the new ‘Big Data’; a term
used by the marketing men to
make a product sound sexier and
more appealing because ‘we use
AI’ sounds a lot more exciting than
‘we have programmers’.
While AI is great at some things
it isn’t a panacea for all ills and it
simply isn’t suited to do many of
the things that some tech
companies are claiming it is doing.
Now, though, something has
come along that might separate
the marketing fluff from the truth.
The Information Commissioner’s
Office (ICO) has unveiled guidance
covering the use of data fed into AI
systems and the resulting
decisions it can make.
At 81 pages, the Guidance on AI
and Data Protection document
isn’t the most scintillating read
and then there’s the 130-page
Explaining Decisions Made with AI
Guidance produced in conjunction
with the Alan Turing Institute that
complements the ICO document
but there is a clear message that
the ICO are giving.
The guidance says that “In the
vast majority of cases, the use of
AI will involve a type of processing
likely to result in a high risk to
individuals’ rights and freedoms
and will therefore trigger the legal
requirement for you to undertake
a DPIA”. They are saying this
because of the huge quantities of
data needed to train AI and that
the decisions that AI makes can’t
really be explained.
This means that if your tech
provider claims to use AI, you, the
organiser, will need to complete
this process. The guidance also
states that this process cannot
just cut and paste what is given to
you by your tech provider. The ICO
helpfully have another 44-page
document about carrying out
DPIAs.
So, what once was a sexy boast
may now not be quite so
attractive. Will we now see a few
tech companies backtrack and say
“Did we say it was AI? Well, it’s not
actually AI per se – that was just
the marketing team getting
excited…”? We will see…
AI seems to have become
the new ‘Big Data’; a term
used by the marketing men to
make a product sound sexier
and more appealing.
www.conference-news.co.uk