CSISAC at the OECD Foresight Forum on Artificial Intelligence
November 18, 2016
Technology Foresight Forums are organised by the OECD Committee for Digital Economy Policy (formerly Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy) to help identify opportunities and challenges for the Internet economy posed by technical developments.
Foresight forums represent a collaborative effort of policy makers from member and non-member governments, business, civil society, and the Internet technical community. Past forum topics include radio frequency identification (RFID), next generation networks, participative web, and cloud computing. On 17 November 2016, the OECD held the 2016 Technology Foresight Forum on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The event took place in the November CDEP, and the CSISAC was invited to take part.
The event focused on 'Applied AI', meaning already existing capacities, instead of in the more general notion of the term. The Forum presented the latest developments, and discussed the policy implications derived from societal changes like the substitution of human labour by AI systems and the need to address the resulting inequalities, the monopoly of the data and software that enable this technology, or threats to civil liberties connected to privacy and security issues.
The topic raised the interest of the CSISAC membership, which contributed with analysis and comments building on the background document distributed as preparation for the Forum. Contributions included CSISAC Steering Committee members Marc Rotenberg and Claire Milne, Michael Gurstein and Roger Clarke. At the Forum, the CSISAC Liaison focused on introducing the notion of 'algorithmic transparency' as a useful way to evaluate and prevent the potentialities and risks of AI, remarking the importance of algorithms for automated decission-making and their falibility. The Liaison expressed concerns about the proposals made at the meeting to evaluate algorithms on a log-basis only, as that would provide only ex-post evidence; and also the need to re-evaluate the intellectual property frameworks so to not avoid innovation in algorithms and proper evaluation and assesment. Finally the Liaison showed support to the proposals raising the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach, supporting the interest for the OECD to foster work in this area, and expressing the interest of the CSISAC to engage
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