Companies, Communities, Contracts and Councils
In an attempt to reboot my weeknote practice, this week a list.
Over the last 7 days I’ve:
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Been filmed for the ‘Complex Context’ introduction video of the British Retail Consortium’s Summer School where I’ll be a contributor focussing on data and AI governance. It was a valuable opportunity to dig into the drivers for consumer-focussed businesses to engage more deeply with customers and communities: from better understanding how technology choices impact different groups, to addressing weakening public trust in commercial use of data and AI. Next week we’ll be digging into these themes more, as members of the People’s Panel on AI take part in a session of the Outside In Project, sharing their perspective on AI adoption with a range of finance, retail and utility companies.
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Run a two-hour hands-on learning session exploring ‘Perspectives on AI’ with a number of VCS organisations in Gloucestershire: digging into the potential and problems of generative AI. Participants particularly zoomed in on the comparatively high carbon cost of using generative AI as opposed to other technologies as a key factor that would influence their decisions to use these tools.
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Attended a workshop hosted by Ada Lovelace Institute on the role of procurement in AI regulation. Building on those earlier climate conversations with VCS organisations, I reflected on how we can learn from recent work on green procurement to understand the opportunities and challenges of embedding ecological and social values in procurement, and deploying public oversight of procurement effectively. I was also struck by the importance of establishing wider understand of the existing governance tools available in different localities, such as cabinet decision logs and call-in procedures for scrutiny of ‘above threshold’ public procurements, and the potential for policy reforms that might, for example, (temporarily) designate all AI and data procurements as requiring cabinet approval in order to trigger opportunities for oversight even in low-cost, high-impact data-related procurements.
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Hosted a consultation session for the Green Party of England and Wales AI Policy Task Group with Jen Persson from Defend Digital Me, who also noted the importance of procurement, and the challenges that arise when sensitive data and AI features are introduced into products as ‘free upgrades’ without providing buyers with clear information about their implications. Our discussions also pointed to the potential of clear labelling regimes to provide information on the environmental impacts, and the data practices, of data and AI products and services on the market. We talked too about how Green Party policy is both setting an agenda for a Green government, but also informing the work of local councillors.
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Made a governor visit to the primary school where I’m a governor to talk about ICT systems, including new monitoring tools providing data on how the school network is being used. The discussions underscored the need for more support for school leaders to be able to make informed choices about technology.
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Been in London for the first meeting of our Community Campaigns on Data cohort - getting inspired by the five campaigns we’ve brought together, and reflecting on the kinds of support we can provide over the coming months to both enhance these campaigns, and generate resources to support others. Alongside important threads of work on powerful and respectful storytelling and finding effective methods of collecting and mobilising data, I am also left thinking more about the role of local democracy and oversight in translating data points to policy change: and the importance of exploring more the connections between metrics, scrutiny and action.
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Kicked off a new project exploring options for a Global Citizens Assembly on AI in collaboration with Iswe Foundation. More on that coming next week!
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Drafted another scenario to test out the Governance Game. It’s getting closer to a next public release and play-tests. I’m just working with Jess to finalise the deck of cards we’ll use, and a draft of how scenarios will be scored.
Although as a list these might feel like quite disparate activities, I’ve found strong connections across them all.