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https://theconversation.com/australia-has-led-the-way-regulating-gene-technology-for-over-20-years-heres-how-it-should-apply-that-to-ai-240571>
"Since 2019, the Australian Department for Industry, Science and Resources has
been striving to make the nation a leader in “safe and responsible” artificial
intelligence (AI). Key to this is a voluntary framework based on eight AI
ethics principles, including “human-centred values”, “fairness” and
“transparency and explainability”.
Every subsequent piece of national guidance on AI has spun off these eight
principles, imploring business, government and schools to put them into
practice. But these voluntary principles have no real hold on organisations
that develop and deploy AI systems.
Last month, the Australian government started consulting on a proposal that
struck a different tone. Acknowledging “voluntary compliance […] is no longer
enough”, it spoke of “mandatory guardrails for AI in high-risk settings”.
But the core idea of self-regulation remains stubbornly baked in. For example,
it’s up to AI developers to determine whether their AI system is high risk, by
having regard to a set of risks that can only be described as endemic to
large-scale AI systems.
If this high hurdle is met, what mandatory guardrails kick in? For the most
part, companies simply need to demonstrate they have internal processes
gesturing at the AI ethics principles. The proposal is most notable, then, for
what it does not include. There is no oversight, no consequences, no refusal,
no redress.
But there is a different, ready-to-hand model that Australia could adopt for
AI. It comes from another critical technology in the national interest: gene
technology."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
