Image source: GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
The Committee on Standards in Public Life has asked government and public bodies to tell it if they are using AI in decision making and lay out any relevant governance processes.
Its chair, Lord Evans, has written to departments, agencies, NHS bodies, local authorities and police forces to establish if they are following recommendations from its report on the issue, published in 2020.
The report made a number of recommendations, including that all organisations: publish as statement on how their use of AI complies with relevant regulations; apply ethical standards in their procurement of AI systems and services; assess the impact of AI on standards at project design stage; and set oversight mechanisms for AI systems to be properly scrutinised.
“Three years on it is clear that AI developments have moved on at some pace,” Evans says in the letter. “As such, we are following up the recommendations made in our report, writing to public bodies and regulators, with the intention of holding a seminar and publishing a formal update on progress later in the year.”
