The Latest AI News and Insights | Weekly Digest 13

May 25, 2022

Each week we will share the latest artificial intelligence news and insights, curated for professionals, board members, and entrepreneurs, as we learn to navigate together the opportunities and threats arising from the evolution of AI and technology.

This week in AI

In AI news this week, we announce two new speakers for our annual conference, cover the role of ethics for AI and share the latest funding news.

Two new speakers join the AI Forum Annual Conference

We are pleased to announce two more distinguished speakers for our September AI Conference. Arpit Narain is the Global Head of Financial Solutions – Machine Learning and Quant Modeling at MathWorks . We are also proud to announce that Dr Rik Das , Lead Software Engineer (Artificial Intelligence Unit,) from Siemens Advanta Consulting will also be joining Arpit using the latest virtual conference technology.

Sponsorships packs are now available by emailing Andy Hutchinson and the agenda for the three day event will be published in June 2022.

The role of ethics for AI

If AI is simply used to automate the workplace, boost profits and decide who is eligible for a loan, then society will not benefit from the awesome power of this soon to be ubiquitous technology. AI needs a mission, and that mission has to be an evolution where the new tools organising our everyday lives are free of bias. Through good governance and transparency, AI can be a force for good.

A laissiez faire approach will not be permitted by international bodies – there has to be some basic regulation, much the same as the consumer protections legislation that exist today.

From research published by AI Forum and the EY team led by Dan Diasio, the report states, “When starting on their AI journey, AI governance and AI ethics are rarely top of mind for organizations. This is confirmed by the survey results, which show that best practices in AI governance are considered or adopted by only more mature AI organizations. However, there are real benefits to start thinking about building trusted AI early in the journey; the times are changing, and regulation is on the horizon. Asking the right questions and identifying new risks early can help prioritize the right use cases for the organization while de-risking the development of AI. It will also help foster adoption by developing algorithms that can be trusted by employees and customers.”

Political objectives are an important factor that is not often considered. Renee Cummings, an AI Ethicist wrote for the World Economic Forum in March 2022, “So much of AI and data science is about civil rights. And when we think about Black History Month, we think about legacy, and American legacy that changed the world. As we think about AI, it’s that an algorithm can create a legacy”.

Inclusivity, bias, governance and regulation of AI are important themes we will return to in future research and videos.

AI Funding News

Credo AI based in California, USA, raised twelve point eight million US Dollars in Series A finance led by Sands Capital. From Credo AI’s website, “Credo AI is an intelligence layer that sits on top of your AI infrastructure and translates technical artifacts into actionable risk & compliance insights for product leaders, data scientists, and governance teams.” As stated earlier, effective governance is currently best practice, but regulations such as the European Union planned AI regulations will create a legal baseline for all AI activity.

California based Heartex raised twenty five million US dollars in Series A funding. The round, led by Redpoint Ventures, included participation from existing investors including Unusual Ventures, Bow Capital, and Swift Ventures. The firm has a collaboration solution for Data Labeling teams, using a data centric model (as opposed to a model centric approach) for a wide variety of projects covering Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, audio, speech and time series data.