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The WEF worked with more than 100 companies and tech experts to develop a new framework for assessing risk and AI.
Companies are implementing new technologies faster than ever in the race to remain competitive, often without understanding the inherent risks.
In response to a growing need to raise awareness about the risks associated with artificial intelligence, the World Economic Forum, together with the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network Fellows from Accenture, BBVA, IBM and Suntory Holdings, worked with more than 100 companies and technology experts over the past year to create the ‘Empowering AI Toolkit’. Developed with the structure of a company board meeting in mind, the toolkit provides a framework for mapping AI policy to company objectives and priorities.
Developed with the structure of a company board meeting in mind, the toolkit provides a framework for mapping artificial intelligence policy to company objectives and priorities.
Any board director reading through WEF’s Empowering AI Toolkit will find it valuable not because it delivers any silver bullets, but because it can provide much-needed context and direction to AI policy discussions – without having to hire expensive consultants.
The new framework identifies seven priorities, like brand strategy and cybersecurity, to be considered from an ethics, risk, audit and governance point of view. The toolkit was designed to mimic how board committees and organisations typically approach ethics, policy and risk.
Artificial intelligence promises to solve some of the most pressing issues faced by society, from ensuring fairer trade and reducing consumer waste, to predicting natural disasters and providing early diagnosis for cancer patients. But scandals such as big data breaches, exposed bias in computer algorithms and new solutions that threaten jobs can destroy brands and stock prices and irreparably damage public trust.
Facebook’s 2018 Cambridge Analytica data crisis opened the world’s eyes to the risks of trusting the private sector with detailed personal data. The fact that an otherwise unknown London analytics company had drawn data on 50 million Facebook users without their permission not only drew public backlash, it sent Facebook’s market value plunging $50 billion within a week of the episode being reported.
This story was first published in The National.
by Carrington Malin
Carrington Malin is a UAE-based marketing and communications professional, consultant, entrepreneur and writer with many years experience of building brands, driving growth and leading high-performance teams. He has worked with a wide range of high-growth, technology and tech-driven ventures across ecommerce, consumer products, digital services, B2B, media, software, hardware and other sectors. These days he focuses mainly on emerging technology ventures related to artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) / virtual reality (VR), blockchain, drones, Internet of Things (IoT), robotics and smart cities.