A full text of the shorter archive in Information Age online 4-12-18 including the contexts and other aspects not covered in the abbreviated online version.

There has been wide discussion, some alarmist, some considered, in the impacts of AI on industry, economics and the community. There has been considerably less discussion of the demands that it will place on the professional involved.

 

There are two areas where IT professionals and managers of IT also need to focus and develop.

 

1.     The role of personal as well as professional ethics; and

2.     The governance structures that are needed to manage the issues raised.

 

The long chain between AI algorithm designers and the final impacts of their application allows and encourages close technical focus on the tasks involved in designing algorithms, selecting data for tuning, and converting these findings into workable tools.

While there is a growing concern over the wider impacts of AI, the necessity for such moves are increasingly affecting straightforward IT processing. The UK House of Lords Select Committee on AI drew in a huge range of expertise, and the evidence is well worth reading. However the Uk Government response is instructive as it shows how a government selects the issues and actions required..

 

No mention is made of the positive potential roles of professional IT-and-related societies in the Uk government response, solely the sticks of regulation and competition control.