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The UK could lead in AI, but only if ethical norms are set

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The House of Lords have pegged the UK as a potential world leader in the development of artificial intelligence, a new report has revealed.

Entitled “The House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee’s report – AI in the UK: Ready, Willing and Able”, the report considered the economic, ethical and social implications of advances in the technology. It stated that AI has great potential to boost the UK’s economy, solve problems and improve productivity – but only if it is handled with care and the ethical implications of it are considered. 

“The prejudices of the past must not be unwittingly built into automated systems, and such systems must be carefully designed from the beginning,” the report reads. There has been research into this matter, with conclusions that algorithmic bias could seriously impact how AI functions. The report warns against the potential for unethical AI to perpetuate prejudices towards certain groups; something that pioneers such as Joy Buolamwini, who is fighting bias in machine learning, would agree with....