#218: The pressing need to build frameworks for ethical AI: Cortnie Abercrombie CEO of AI Truth

Data Futurology - Leadership And Strategy in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science

On the Data Futurology podcast this week we have AI expert and author, Cortnie Abercrombie. Abercrombie is the CEO of AI Truth, an organisation that empowers business leaders to leverage AI in an ethical and innovative manner. She is also the author of What You Don’t Know: AI’s Unseen Influence On Your Life And How To Take Back Control.

We start the conversation on the podcast talking about the challenges that data scientists face with data governance, and the many challenging questions that complicate that.

Then we discuss the challenge of maintaining models, and what that means for the safe shepherding of data. As Abercrombie notes, the average tenure of a data scientist at an organisation is only 12 to 18 months. When an organisation is managing dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of models, it can become difficult to maintain the quality and integrity of the underlying data.

As Abercrombie notes, the stakes for this might be very high indeed. “Think about robotic-assisted surgery,” she said. “If there aren’t the proper constraints and management of the data, what’s to say you couldn’t cut a hole bigger than a person can handle, because the AI “sees” cancer material that is significantly larger than it actually is?”

Another challenge that we discuss on the podcast is the structure of teams within the organisation, and how, particularly with regards to larger companies, oversight into the applications being developed is too siloed. According to Abercrombie, with too many enterprises there’s a lack of consistency in processes and company-wide oversight and policy across those teams.

One of the key steps that is being overlooked in the rush towards AI, Abercrombie notes, is data literacy. Organisations and individuals need to redouble their efforts to truly understand data first. Because without that, the ethical application of AI is always going to be a difficult question.

For more deep insights into the thinking that is driving ethical AI and how enterprises are thinking about it, tune into the podcast!

Enjoy the show!

Find out more about Cortnie’s book at Amazon

Thank you to our sponsor, Talent Insights Group!

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What we discussed:

00:00 Introduction
03:56 Cortnie outlines why AI needs regulation and draws on some of her experience as an advisor to Fortune 500 companies on responsible artificial intelligence
07:24 Felipe and Cortnie discuss the importance of having a conversation about data governance in the industry
18:55 Accountability and kill switches in Intelligent Automation
26:06 Corporate AI ethics best practices she has been working on
32:16 Felipe and Cortnie talk about the concept of an external review committee in the AI industry