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Ada Lovelace Institute

In 2022, JUST AI moved to being hosted by the LSE. Learnings from this pilot project have contributed to greater understanding of the challenges and approaches to funding and hosting fellowship programmes, within the Ada Lovelace Institute and in the development of a broader data and AI research and funding community globally.

The Ada Lovelace Institute is delighted to convene a special track at Data for Policy 2020 – the premier global forum for interdisciplinary and cross-sector discussions around the impact and potentials of data-driven innovations in governance and policy.

The special track – Data Governance in the Public lnterest – includes two panels chaired by Alison Powell, Director of the Ada Lovelace Institute’s JUST AI network, to focus on issues of data access and data sharing in public life. The sessions will explore questions of governance, infrastructural constraints, and methods to establish data stewardship that embeds ethical values and supports struggles for justice.

Following an open call for proposals, we are delighted to be hosting 11 speakers who will be presenting nine papers which represent a variety of disciplinary perspectives, across two panels:

Tuesday 15 September, 15:15 BST

  • Lily O’Flynn and Simon Whitworth, UK Statistics Authority, discussing: Digital Economy Act 2017, Research Strand: De-Identified Public Authority Data for Public Good Research
  • Arthur Glenn Maail, World Wide Web Foundation and Dhanaraj Thakur, Centre for Democracy and Technology, discussing: Risk to Collaboration: Assessing the risks of Cross-border Open Data Sharing by Civil Society Organizations in the Lower-Mekong Region
  • Craig Campbell, Oxford Internet Institute, discussing: Imagining Municipalities as Data Fiduciaries
  • Marina Micheli, Joint Research Centre European Commission, discussing: Accessing privately held data to foster the public interest: Mapping public/private sector relations in twelve European cities
  • Maria Savona, University of Sussex, discussing: Unravelling the contact tracing apps’ saga: Lessons to create synergies between decentralised and centralised data governance

Special Panel: Brave New Worlds? Ethics in Theory and Practice in Public Data Provision

Thursday 17 September, 09:00 BST

  • Stergios Aidinlis, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, discussing: Reconsidering the ‘Public/Private’ Divide in Data Governance: Legal Realities and Ethical Implications
  • Francesco Tava, Department of Health and Social Sciences; University of the West of England, discussing: Towards a New Ethical Approach to Data Governance: Challenges and Potentialities
  • Felix Ritchie, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, discussing: Risk, Precedents and Sand: Introducing Novelty into Practice in the Public Sector
  • Elizabeth Green, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, discussing: Implementing Ethical Models in Low Income Countries

Data for Policy Ambassador scholarships:

The usual price of a ticket to attend Data for Policy 2020 is £150. Data for Policy is committed to increasing diversity in its delegate community and is offering Data for Policy Ambassador scholarships to suitable candidates. They particularly welcome applications from groups which are currently underrepresented in the community, in particular those from developing nations, who will extend geographic diversity. For further details, and how to apply, please visit the Data for Policy website. Deadline for application is 21 August 2020.

#dataforpolicy2020 | @dataforpolicy

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Ada Lovelace Institute

The Ada Lovelace Institute is delighted to join one of the first CogXtra sessions – a new weekly format by CogX providing members with single topic, half-day virtual events co-created with partners.

On Wednesday 9 September, we joined the CogXtra session on The Tech We Want: An Ethical Approach to Innovation to host a panel on Black Data Matters: how missing data undermines equitable societies.

Watch the session below:

About the Black Data Matters panel: 

Missing data matters: it can exacerbate inequalities on a societal scale. When that data is operationalised into algorithmic decision-making systems and AI, the social processes that produce racial inequality – mechanisms of power, economics, knowledge, culture and language – can be written into technologies with huge societal impacts.

Data has the potential to drive public good: the study of factors associated with COVID-19 mortality on the openSAFELY analytics platform shows the power of data to bring rapid insights and positive change to the pandemic response, and AI has accelerated drug testing in the hunt for a vaccine.

But missing and misused data can undermine the benefits data-driven technologies bring to society: the Public Health England report was unable to draw conclusions into disparities in deaths from COVID-19 because of gaps in data collection, and the recently withdrawn streaming algorithm used by the Home Office visa application system was designed not only to discriminate on the basis of nationality by ‘red-flagging’ countries but also to reinforce bias by weighting countries on the basis of previous visa rejections.

Beginning with the UK data landscape as it exists today, experts in race equality, decolonial theory, data and statistics, and data-driven technologies will interrogate missing data and its real-world effects. Shifting to a wider focus, the panel will apply these insights to consider the principles that should underpin data-driven technologies, their design and implementation, and how they can support rather than undermine an equitable society.

Questions include:

  • How do we establish shared understandings of social good in data and technology?
  • What is the right data to underpin an equitable society?
  • How do inequalities in data lead to unequal applications of data through technology?
  • By connecting missing or inadequate data on black lives in datasets with the outcomes of technological innovations that are built on that data, can we overcome biases in products and systems that affect Black, Asian and ethnic minority people?

Chair

Panel

  • Dr Zubaida Haque

    Interim Director, Runnymede Trust

  • Sir Ian Diamond Diamond

    National Statistician and Head of the Government Statistical Service

  • Dr William Isaac Isaac

    Senior Research Scientist, Ethics and Society Team, DeepMind

Find out more about The Tech We Want: An Ethical Approach to Innovation CogXtra session on Wednesday 9 September, 2020.

Find out more about CogX annual membership and get 30% off with the following codes:

ADAPRMANL30SEP- for 30% off Gold Premium Annual Membership

ADAPROANL30SEP- for 30% off Professional Annual Membership 

ADAGLDANL30SEP – for 30% off Gold Annual Membership 

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Ada Lovelace Institute

To celebrate the launch of Data Justice and COVID-19: Global Perspectives, the Ada Lovelace Institute hosted a conversation that extends the book’s COVID-19 commentary by asking: ‘What will be the enduring impact of the COVID-19 crisis on surveillance practices?’

Watch the session below:

This video is embedded with YouTube’s ‘privacy-enhanced mode’ enabled although it is still possible that if you play this video it may add cookies.  Read our Privacy policy and Digital best practice for more on how we use digital tools and data. 

Chair

Speakers

  • Vidushi Marda

    Digital Programme Officer
    ARTICLE 19

  • Karen Yeung

    University of Birmingham

  • Linnet Taylor

    University of Tilburg

Edited by Linnet Taylor, Aaron Martin, Gargi Sharma and Shazade Jameson, the book is a unique collection of 38 essays from global authors, providing commentary and analysis that compares and contrasts how different surveillance technologies were rolled out in the first few months of the pandemic.

Surveillance practices which have emerged during the pandemic include not only the digital contact tracing apps, which have proliferated across Europe, but initiatives such as a centralised registry of mobile devices in Ghana, a quarantine enforcement app in Poland, and a myriad of workplace surveillance tools rolled out by employers across the world to monitor their remote workers. Many of these technologies have been promoted against the backdrop of governmental and private sector excitement about the potential of technological tools to aid in the pandemic response, even while activist and public pushback to the uncritical adoption of data-driven solutions to social problems has ensued.

The adoption of COVID-19 technologies has raised the real possibility of the normalisation of surveillance technology in the name of emergency response. Carried out in the name of public health, by companies that are already equipped with unprecedented wealth, power and influence, this may lay the groundwork for digital infrastructures that could redraw the boundaries of privacy and limit an equitable distribution of resources well after the pandemic has passed.

While public health is subject to the medical ethics principle to ‘do no harm’, epidemiological surveillance is increasingly being connected to corporate infrastructures and business models that respond to interests other than collective wellbeing. This event looks to ask how can we reorient the development of our digital public health infrastructure toward solidarity and the public interest?

The event also explored some of the following questions:

  • What are the new types, or uses of, surveillance technologies that the current epidemiological turn is enabling?
  • How do the actors involved in epidemiological surveillance map onto those involved in the information economy, and where does this overlap become problematic?
  • What are the risks for public health as a field, and to society more broadly, when we allow global corporations to use commercial tools to fight the pandemic?
  • What approaches, emerging during the pandemic, are likely to develop data-driven infrastructures that place social justice at their core?

Data Justice and COVID-19: Global Perspectives is published by Meatspace Press and available as a free PDF download here.

 

For 30% off a hardcopy of the book use: LOVELACE2020

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Ada Lovelace Institute

In the second of our public evidence events on vaccine passports and COVID status apps, we are joined by experts in immunology, epidemiology and economics to explore questions around protection and transmission from vaccines, and the possible economic implications that underpin the idea of vaccine passports.

Watch the event in full below:

This video is embedded with YouTube’s ‘privacy-enhanced mode’ enabled although it is still possible that if you play this video it may add cookies. Read our Privacy policy and Digital best practice for more on how we use digital tools and data.

Chair

  • Imogen Parker

    Associate Director (Society, justice & public services)

Speakers

  • Linda Yueh

    Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University and Adjunct Professor of Economics at London Business School

  • Mark Jit

    Professor of Vaccine Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

  • Ruth Payne

    NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer and Honorary SpR in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, University of Sheffield

Responses to the pandemic, such as lockdowns and border closures, have often been framed in terms of striking a balance between protecting people’s health and protecting the economy, though whether there is a real trade-off for these measures is still uncertain. When it comes to vaccine passports and COVID status apps that may allow vaccinated individuals exemption from restrictions and greater access to goods and services, it is important to ask how much economic benefit such a scheme would provide, and what risks to public health it might run, if any.

What we know is that no COVID-19 vaccine so far produced is 100% effective at preventing disease. And while the evidence on prevention of transmission is still emerging, it does not seem likely it will completely prevent transmission either. This means that allowing those vaccinated to be exempt from certain restrictions, as validated by a vaccine passport, will still run some public health risk. Individual and collective risk will also depend on how the effectiveness of immune response varies over time and between different vaccines themselves.

However, vaccine passports could also support the opening up of the economy for some, be likely to have benefits, both for individuals in terms of enjoyment and mental health, and collectively as a stronger economy. This could have benefits even for those still in restrictions.
To this end, it is essential that we consider the economic and wellbeing benefits alongside the public health risk and the net balance between the two in terms of overall welfare.

The panel will consider:

  • What is the current scientific understanding of how different vaccines and different vaccine dose schedules affect individuals’ relative risk of COVID-19 disease and transmission? How does this risk change over time after doses have been administered?
  • Based on that information, what effect would different vaccine passport schemes have on the spread of COVID-19?
  • What would be the economic benefits from opening up different sectors of the economy and allowing people not to quarantine or self-isolation under different vaccine passport schemes?
  • What are the trade-offs each kind of scheme would need to weigh up in implementation?

Image credit: Kameleon007

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Ada Lovelace Institute

The launch event for the Ada Lovelace Institute’s new research report on participatory data stewardship. 

The report takes the view that good data governance should be rights-preserving, informed by values and engaging with questions of fairness, and must involve in meaningful ways the people whose data is used or about which data decisions are taken.  

Watch the event back here:

This video is embedded with YouTube’s ‘privacy-enhanced mode’ enabled although it is still possible that if you play this video it may add cookies. Read our Privacy policy and Digital best practice for more on how we use digital tools and data.

Chair

Introductory presentation

Panellists

Well-managed data can support organisations, researchers, governments and corporations to conduct lifesaving health research, reduce environmental harms and produce societal value for individuals and communities.  

But the current conditions for data collection, storage, sharing and use – and the concentration of power in a small number of technology companies who sustain market dominance by continuing to use extractive data practices – have led to well-publicised misuses of personal data, data breaches and sharing scandals.  

These range from the backlash to Care.Data and GPDPR, the much-maligned Ofqual exam results algorithm, through to the response to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s collection and use of data for political advertising.  

High-profile scandals such as these have resulted in ‘tenuous’ public trust in data sharing, which entrenches public concern about data use and impedes the use of data in the public interest, and the development of trustworthy mechanisms for data governance.  

During this event the panellists discuss: 

  • How to innovate with new mechanisms to involve people, ensuring that data stewardship puts data back into the hands of people and society. 
  • How to support legitimate data governance through encouraging practices that reject data collection, storage, sharing and use in ways that are opaque or seek to manipulate people. 
  • How to encourage practices that empower people to help inform, shape and govern their own data.  
  • What it means to have ‘trustworthiness’ in data and AI systems.   

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Ada Lovelace Institute

The launch event for the Ada Lovelace Institute’s new report: Regulate to innovate. 

The report highlights how regulation is an indispensable tool, alongside robust industry codes of practice and judicious public-funding and procurement decisions, to help navigate the narrow path between the risks and harms these technologies present.

The UK Government has big ambitions for AI, with the recently published National AI Strategy setting out the goal of growing the UK into an ‘AI superpower’.  

But there remains a significant gap in the Government’s plans for an economy and society powered and enhanced by AI: the development of a clear approach to regulation. 

Despite the positive potential of AI, and its applications across multiple industries – from healthcare and transport to finance and retail – the technology also presents significant risks and challenges. Across the world, AI systems are already being used in high-stakes settings such as recruitment, the assessment of eligibility for benefits and the granting of parole, presenting unresolved questions concerning agency, accountability and bias.   

In recognition of these challenges, other parts of the world have already started to draft legislation towards the regulation of AI. 2021 has seen the European Commission release a draft proposal for the regulation of AI, the Cyberspace Administration of China pass a set of draft regulations for algorithmic systems and the US Congress introduce several pieces of federal AI governance and data-protection legislation, such as the Information Transparency and Personal Data Control Act. 

Watch back the event:

This video is embedded with YouTube’s ‘privacy-enhanced mode’ enabled although it is still possible that if you play this video it may add cookies. Read our Privacy policy and Digital best practice for more on how we use digital tools and data.

Chair

  • Andrew Strait

    Associate Director (Emerging technology & industry practice)

Speakers

Drawing from the Ada Lovelace Institute’s recently published report, Regulate to innovate, we bring together experts to discuss: 

  • What are the choices facing the UK Government when it comes to regulating AI? 
  • What is the significance of robust AI regulation for the UK’s AI industry? 
  • What are the different means by which regulators and government might overcome the many challenges associated with regulating a complex, opaque and general-purpose technology like AI? 

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Ada Lovelace Institute

If you are interested in attending, please email hello@adalovelaceinstitute.org 

The event follows a three-year long programme of research, conducted in partnership with The Health Foundation, examining the interaction between data-driven systems and health and social inequalities in the wake of COVID-19.

We will share our findings and recommendations from the research project, as well as hear from panellists and speakers from across policy, research, practice and civil society about their own work in this area. The aim is to bring people together across disciplines to facilitate meaningful discussion and knowledge exchange.

We are delighted that the event will feature a ‘fireside chat’ with Professor Dame Margaret Whitehead, the WH Duncan Chair of Public Health at the University of Liverpool and Chair of the Independent Review of Equity in Medical Devices.

Other speakers are confirmed from Health Data Research UK, UCL, University of Oxford, APLE Collective, Red Cross and Liberating Knowledge. We will follow-up with a finalised agenda.

We want to build a shared understanding of actions need to respond to the challenges of health inequalities in a digital context. As part of this, attendees will also hear from people with lived experience of health inequalities whose perspectives aren’t always heard in policy or academic contexts.

We hope this event will be of value to people involved in digital transformation across the health and social care sector, those with a research interest in digital health and inequalities, and anyone designing digital health services.

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Ada Lovelace Institute

The Ada Lovelace Institute and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics are pleased to invite you to join us for the launch of our new report:

Predicting: The Future of Health? – Assessing the potential, risks and appropriate role of AI-powered genomic health prediction in the UK health system

In recent years, hopes and predictions have proliferated about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and genomics to transform the UK’s approach to healthcare – with greater levels of efficiency, precision and personalisation held up as the prize for investment and adoption of genomic technologies.

This event will focus on the use of AI-powered genomic health prediction (AIGHP), an emerging set of AI-driven techniques that enable predictions about people’s future health and responses to medicines to be made from their genomic data.

Confirmed speakers include:

  • Arzoo Ahmed – Director of Ethics at Our Future Health
  • Grace Browne – freelance journalist covering health, science and medicine
  • Harry Farmer – Senior Researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute
  • Professor Sarah Cunningham–Burley – Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics

To its champions, AIGHP holds out the possibility of ushering in a prevention-focused approach to health and healthcare in the UK. However, these benefits are not guaranteed and largescale deployment of AIGHP brings financial, ethical and service-level risks.

Join us for a presentation of our report’s recommendations on how AIGHP might be integrated into the UK healthcare system in a way that maximises its potential benefits relative to the risks it poses and the resources it would require, including:

  • The conditions and protections that need to be in place before AIGHP can be responsibly deployed routinely in UK healthcare.
  • The overall approach to and use of AIGHP that best suits the capabilities, limitations and requirements of the technology.

We will also discuss how our findings impact live policy debates concerning the use of AI and new technologies in the NHS (and public services more broadly), the UK’s approach to data protection and AI regulation and current governance arrangements on the use of genetic data by insurers.

We really hope you will be able to join us in our Farringdon offices, however we recognise that this may not be possible for all, so online attendance will be available for those not able to attend in-person.

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