In this session, A+T 2020 speakers Anders Kofod-Petersen, Susie Alegre, and Erin B. Taylor discuss AI, personal risk assessments, and ask what kind of financial society do we want to shape.
Anders Kofod-Petersen: Ethics, bias, fairness and what’s wrong with (artificial) intelligence?
Anders Kofod-Petersen is Deputy Director of the Alexandra Institute, and a Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is in its 65th year in a pretty good shape. In many ways, it has finally grown up and out of the laboratories, into the real world. The application of AI is, on a daily basis solving new interesting problems, creating new value and forcing us to take a critical look at what we mean when we say, “being ethical”, “having bias”, “being fair” or “being trustworthy”. The latter becomes very important when AI is applied to services for the basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy.
This talk covers why certain properties of AI methods are the best thing the has ever happen to ethics, fairness, and supporting humans.
Listen to our interview with Anders about why building AI responsibly is like building a house. You can also read an edited version of our conversation with Anders.
Susie Alegre: Personal Risk Assessments. What’s Fair and Reasonable?
Susie Alegre is an international human rights barrister and consultant.
The use of technology for personal risk assessments is increasingly elaborate and fundamental to the development of consumer-focused FinTech. In the UK, financial services providers have to be able to show that they have been fair and reasonable in their dealings with consumers.
This includes decisions on credit or insurance products where complex calculations are made to decide whether or not a company wants to provide a service to an individual consumer, and at what price. The range of data available on individual consumers is growing exponentially and is used to inform these decisions – but when the computer says no, how can you tell if it’s fair and reasonable?
Listen to Susie’s podcast interview in which she talks about freedom of thought in the digital age.
Erin B. Taylor: Fintechnical solutions to inequality: A human perspective
Erin B. Taylor is an economic anthropologist.
In 1903, sociologist Georg Simmel called money ‘the great leveller’ for its ability to reduce all transactions to a common denominator. Many attempts have been made to harness money’s levelling properties for the purpose of fostering greater socioeconomic equality. Over the last few decades, people have especially looked to technical solutions to fulfil this goal.
Unfortunately, we now know that these technological solutions are flawed. For example, algorithms inherit the biases of the people who make them, and while they can be immensely useful, they can also exacerbate inequalities.
In this talk Erin explores some of the technical solutions offered to counter financial inequality and show how they clash with both human and machine realities. She argues that we need to invest less time looking for technical solutions, and more on asking what it means to be a financial being, how our finances underlie our life projects, and what a financial world made for humans might look like.
Listen to our interview with Erin talking about all things money, and read an edited version of our conversation.