Using AI in the public sector: New comprehensive guidance
This week the UK government published ‘Using artificial intelligence in the public sector,’ an initiative led by the Office for Artificial Intelligence (OAI) and the Government Digital Service (GDS), with the Turing's public policy programme contributing guidance on AI ethics and safety.
The new guide states that several public sector organisations are already successfully using AI for tasks ranging from fraud detection to answering customer queries. It explains how the potential uses for AI in the public sector are significant, but must be balanced with ethical, fairness and safety considerations.
These ethical and safety issues are laid out in full in a section of the guide titled ‘Understanding artificial intelligence ethics and safety’ by David Leslie, Ethics Fellow in the Turing’s public policy programme. This groundbreaking work is the most comprehensive guidance on the topic of AI ethics and safety in the public sector to date.