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Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation Minutes - Advisory Board Meeting 3

Updated 12 October 2023

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26th April 2022

Virtual Advisory Board Meeting

Attendees:

  • Edwina Dunn - Interim Chair (ED)
  • Dr Rumman Chowdhury
  • Jack Clark
  • Eddie Copeland
  • Martin Hosken
  • Prof Neil Lawrence
  • Dr Marion Oswald
  • James Plunkett
  • Baroness Kate Rock
  • Richard Sargeant
  • Dr Adrian Weller
  • Dr Mimi Zou

Apologies:

  • Jessica Lennard

Guests (DCMS):

  • Susannah Storey, Director General for Digital and Media Policy, DCMS

CDEI Staff:

  • Felicity Burch (FB)
  • Louise Sheridan (LS)
  • Sam Cannicott (SC)
  • Team Leads
  • Secretariat

Item 1: Intro

ED started the meeting by providing an overview of a CDEI AI Assurance roundtable, held between Minister Philp and leading UK AI companies, that took place earlier in the day.

Item 2: Welcome from Susannah Storey

Susannah Storey gave a welcome address on current DCMS priorities and the CDEI’s role within the wider policy landscape. She thanked Advisory Board members for their vital insights and real-world knowledge that have informed policy making and delivery of the agenda. There then followed a discussion on:

  • how the CDEI should engage with the Office for Science and Technology Strategy (OSTS) and National Council for Science and Technology (NCST);
  • opportunities for cross-government sponsorship of the CDEI’s work.

Item 3: CDEI Programme Development

FB provided a recap of the CDEI’s vision to deliver impactful, outcome-oriented, and multi-party programmes. LS then talked the Advisory Board through our current thinking, including how we will define programmes around systemic and societal problems and confirmed AI Assurance as an initial programme. In response, the Advisory Board:

  • advised that we should develop a simple narrative for how we will deliver the programmes;
  • raised the challenge of communicating work programmes with different audiences;
  • recommended deeper, earlier engagement with partners to amplify programmes’ impact and promote co-design;
  • noted that procurement could be an important lever to deliver impact.

SC presented and tested a model for programme governance structures to enable Advisory Board members to become more deeply involved in the AI Assurance programme.

Item 4: Public Trust and Data Use

The team updated the Advisory Board on insights from the CDEI’s recent Public Attitudes Tracker Survey around attitudes to data and AI and their public engagement plan, to help to generate trustworthiness in the use of data and AI. In response, the Advisory Board:

  • commended the work and commented on the importance of monitoring attitudes over time to understand changes;
  • noted organisations doing similar public attitudes work in the landscape that the CDEI should coordinate with;
  • highlighted that explaining data-driven technology and AI use-cases in detail significantly increases public trust, but that explaining AI use-cases in this way can be challenging to replicate at scale;
  • recommended that the CDEI should focus future polling work on understanding what rules should be implemented to resolve public trust issues, now that the general picture of public attitudes toward AI and data-driven technology has been established;
  • advised that the CDEI understand use-cases where data-driven technology and AI have been deployed unsuccessfully to learn from them internally.

Item 5: PETs Prize Challenge Update

The team updated the Advisory Board on the progress of the PETs Prize Challenge and upcoming launch. This included an overview of the planned challenge structure.

  • recommended that we seek advice on how to red team effectively and carefully monitor its use as a method because many organisations are grappling with it;
  • suggested considering how to assess ethical and legal aspects of prize solutions.

Item 6: Close

ED closed the meeting.

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