The global AI standards landscape: an extended seminar, took place on 14th and 15th December, 09.00-13.30. The objectives of the event were to raise awareness of standards in general, share knowledge of particular standards activities related to AI and foster community-building between standards making and AI interests.
The speakers focused on particular topics that fall within the scope of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Accountable, Responsible and Transparent Artificial Intelligence (ART-AI) and included activities on emerging standards on certification, algorithmic bias, data management and the design of (semi-)autonomous systems, as well as providing perspectives from national standardisation, consumer and industry bodies. The event finished with a panel discussion which focussed on individual perspectives on the standards-making process.
We would like to thank all of our speakers who contributed to this successful event.
Details of the agenda along with the presenters’ slides and videos of the presentations can be found below.
Programme
Monday 14th December 2020 09:00am-13:30pm
09.00-09.15 Welcome and Introduction with Julian Padget, ART-AI Theme Lead – Innovations in AI technologies
09.15-10.15 The International Standards Landscape with Milan Patel, Chair of British Standards Institute Committee on Artificial Intelligence (ART/001)
10.15-11.15 Ethical Assurance of Technology through Standardization & Certification with Ali Hessami, Vice Chair, IEEE Ethics Certification Programme for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (ECPAIS)
11.15-11.30 Break
11.30-12.30 Algorithmic Bias with Ansgar Koene, Working Group Chair for IEEE Standard on Algorithm Bias Considerations (P7003)
12.30-13.15 Consumer Protection with Chiara Giovannini, Senior Manager Policy & Innovation, Deputy Secretary General at ANEC (Association européenne pour la coordination de la représentation des consommateurs pour la normalisation), known as the European Association for the Co-ordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation
13.15-13.30 Closing discussion with Julian Padget
Tuesday 15th December 2020 09:00am-13:30pm
09.00-09.15 Welcome and Introduction with Julian Padget
09.15-10.00 Bias and Classification with Matt Blakemore, Head of Product at the British Board of Film Classification, member of ART/001 and ISO-IEC/JTC1/SC42/WG2 (Data)
10.00-11.00 Data Management for Smart Citizen Services with Lindsay Frost (NEC), European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), Chair of ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) cross cutting Context Information Management (CIM), Chair of ETSI OCG AI.
11.00-11.15 Break
11.15-12.15 Fail-safe design of autonomous systems with Ken Wallace, Working Group Chair for IEEE Standard for Fail-Safe Design of Autonomous and Semi-Autonomous Systems (P7009)
12.15-13.15 Individual perspectives on the standards-making process – Panel session chaired by Dr Emma Carmel, ART-AI Theme Lead – AI and Public Policy
13.15-13.30 Closing discussion with Julian Padget
Abstracts and bios of the speakers
Milan Patel ‘The International Standards Landscape’
Bio
Milan is a member of Microsoft’s corporate standards group. He chairs BSI’s committee on Artificial Intelligence which mirrors the ISO/IEC JTC1 subcommittee on AI and has a broad and growing membership. Milan is also an active contributor to international standards work on information security and data privacy.
Prof. Ali Hessami ‘Ethical Assurance of Technology through Standardization & Certification’
Abstract
Beyond safety after 2 millennia, new concerns over the traditional protection of the life and property have emerged in physical and cyber context. The well-being, happiness and overall quality of life in the social context is the next dimension of interest largely driven by the emergence and advancement of autonomous and intelligent digital technologies that pervade our lives and may progress further to impact on many aspects of our lives normally considered private and personal. This is rather unprecedented in human history and requires urgent review, evaluation of the existing and emerging social hazards and formulation of proactive strategies to preserve and protect moral and ethical values that have evolved over millennia for the advancement and prosperity of human societies.
The emergence of ethical concerns is largely driven by the threats to human agency and some fundamental rights when faced with autonomous decision making and algorithmic learning systems (ADM/ALS). This is a broad concern and applies to any sector, discipline and context from transportation to financial services and smart health applications.
This presentation will give a broad context for the consideration of ethics and values in the exploitation of the emerging digital technologies and elaborates on the IEEE initiatives in this socially and globally sensitive context.
Bio
Ali is currently the Director of R&D and Innovation at Vega Systems. He is an expert in the systems assurance and safety, security, sustainability and knowledge assessment/management methodologies and has a background in design and development of advanced control systems for business and safety critical industrial applications.
Ali represents UK on CENELEC & IEC safety systems, hardware & software standards committees. He is a member of Cyber Security Standardisation SG24 and WG26 Groups and chairs the IEEE SIGHT and the Systems Council Chapters in the UK and Ireland Section.
During 2017 Ali joined the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) as a committee member for the new landmark IEEE P7000 standard focused on “Ethical Considerations in System Design”. He was subsequently appointed as the Technical Editor and later the Chair of P7000 standard. In November 2018, he was appointed as the VC and Process Architect of the IEEE ‘s global Ethics Certification Programme for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (ECPAIS).
Ali is a Visiting Professor at London City University and at Beijing Jiaotong University School of Electronics & Information Engineering. He is also a Fellow of Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), Fellow of the UK Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET) and a Senior Member of IEEE.
Dr Ansgar Koene ‘Algorithmic Bias’
Abstract
Starting from a brief overview of key challenges in the design and use of data driven algorithmic decision-making systems I will focus in on the inherently socio-technical nature of real-world applications that give rise to concerns about bias.
Against this background I will discuss the use-cases and design framework currently under consideration in the IEEE P7003 Standard for Algorithmic Bias Considerations working group
Bio
Dr. Ansgar Koene is Global AI Ethics and Regulatory Leader at EY (Ernst & Young) where he contributes to the work on AI governance, trusted AI frameworks and AI related public policy engagement. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Horizon Digital Economy Research institute of the University of Nottingham.
Ansgar chairs the IEEE P7003 Standard for Algorithmic Bias Considerations working group, and participates in IEEE standards and certification (ECPAIS) and through BSI in ISO/IEC JTC1 SC42 and the CEN-CENELEC Focus Group for AI.
He is a trustee for the 5Rgiths foundation for the Rights of Young People Online and is part of the 5Rights Digital Futures Committee.
Ansgar has a multi-disciplinary research background, having worked and published on topics ranging from Policy and Governance of Algorithmic Systems (AI), data-privacy, AI Ethics, AI Standards, bio-inspired Robotics, AI and Computational Neuroscience to experimental Human Behaviour/Perception studies. He holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience.
Chiara Giovannini ‘Consumer Protection’
Bio
Chiara Giovannini works for ANEC since 2002, first as Programme Manager and presently as Senior Manager, Policy & Innovation and Deputy Secretary General. Apart from deputising for the Secretary General, she leads ANEC’s works on Accessibility and Digital Society and is responsible for horizontal and strategic policy issues.
Prior to working for ANEC, Ms. Giovannini worked at Swiss Consumers Organisation. She holds a Master degree in European Law.
Ms Giovannini represents ANEC at high-level events, committees and research Advisory Boards. For example, she was a member of the European Commission High Level Group on Artificial Intelligence and Ethics.
ANEC is the European consumer voice in standardisation. ANEC defends the European consumer interest in the creation of technical standards and European laws and public policies making use of standards.
Matt Blakemore ‘Bias and Classification’
Bio
Matthew Blakemore, Head of Product at the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), member of ART/001 and ISO-IEC/JTC1/SC42/WG2 (Data), committee member of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce.
Lindsay Frost ‘Data Management for Smart Citizen Services‘
Bio
Lindsay Frost is Chief Standardisation Engineer at NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH, chairman of the ETSI ISG CIM group for Context Information Management, chairman of ETSI OCG AI group, Board member of ETSI, and ETSI lead delegate to the three CEN/CENELEC/ETSI groups SF-SSCC (Sector Forum for Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities), Focus Group on AI, and CG-SMa (Coordination Group for Smart Manufacturing) as well as external Advisor to the StandICT.eu 2023 Project for coordinating standardisation (in Smart Cities and in AI). His previous roles included: board member of HGI, co-chairman of HGI Smart Home group, Chair of ETSI TISPAN WG5 Home Networks, Chair of WFA Mobile Convergence group. Lindsay Frost has a Ph.D in experimental physics, a strong interest in medical engineering and a passion for promoting better use of standards for IoT, AI, Smart Cities and communities.
Abstract
Title: Data Management for Smart Citizen Services
AI needs data – good data. Citizens need good services. This workshop considers AI from many different viewpoints: research, ethics, consumer usage, engineering benchmarking, bias-avoidance, and standardization. This presentation builds on the role of standards for enabling interoperability and providing a solid foundation for laws. The talk considers the role of data management, based on standards, to cater to the needs of AI applications and to fulfil the diverse requirements of citizens. Requirements relate to the processes: collection, ownership, authentication, quality control, licensing, processing audits, exchange, GDPR, confidentiality, deletion, annotation and augmentation, decision making, likelihood estimation, etc. Citizen requirements relate to applications in: government service provisioning, eHealth, commercial decision-making, self-optimization of dynamic engineering processes (telecom networks, assembly-line operations, circular-economy product lifecycle), etc. The major part of this talk considers the ETSI specification of the NGSI-LD standard for collection and exchange of annotated data, and the place for this standard in the (huge) ecosystem of the Digital Economy. NGSI-LD is an exchange protocol across distributed or federated systems, with means to annotate data with metadata (including quality metrics or licensing conditions) in such a way that all terms are externally referenced (re-used) so as to encourage consistency and use of linked data. Most importantly, NGSI-LD makes the relationships between items of data of equal importance to “bare facts” so that Knowledge Graph aspects can be preserved and exchanged.
Ken Wallace ‘Fail-safe design of autonomous systems’
Abstract
One of the series of standards being developed as part of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems the focus for the P7009 standard is fail-safe design of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. This presentation will address the challenges involved in developing such a standard in a very rapidly evolving environment where the potential real-world consequences of failure are significant.
The wider context of how standards themselves can evolve and adapt to meet the wider societal implications of the current ‘Cambrian explosion’ of the digital world will be considered with reference to the work of both the P7009 and P7006 Working Groups.
Bio
A member of the P7009 Working Group since inception, Ken previously served as the Vice-Chair for the Group prior to becoming Chair in 2020. He spent a number of years in academia in the UK and North America working at the intersection of neuroscience and computing before moving into industry. Since doing so Ken has held engineering and management positions working on the development and application of information and software-dependent/intensive systems across a range of enterprises. He is currently Head of Software Engineering for the Naval Division of BAE Systems. Ken retains links with academia currently acting as an academic accreditor for the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and an industrial member of the IET Academic Advisory Committee.
A Chartered Engineer, Ken is a member of the ACM, a senior member of the IEEE, a Fellow of the IET and a member of INCOSE. In addition to leading the P7009 Working Group, he also Chairs the IEEE P7006 Working Group which is developing a standard for Personal Data Artificial Intelligence Agents.
* Featured Image credit: “Puzzle-standardisation” by European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST)*
