Responsible AI Innovation
I dipped into this session on my way between other events. For such a hot topic, this event was strangely ill-attended. It was hosted by the New Statesman and software giant Adobe.
To state the obvious, there is a conflict between two reasonable objectives: to promote UK growth by stimulating AI development and implementation but to simultaneously regulate AI to prevent commercial interest overriding very real concerns about misinformation, deepfakery, copyright theft and personal privacy.
Points I picked up before I had to rush off:
- We must evolve our regulatory architecture. An encouraging fact we were told is that the British Standards Institution was the first regulatory body to be established anywhere in the world [I must own up: I haven’t fact-checked this!] so it shouldn’t be beyond our wit to regulate AI.
- Electoral Law in the UK currently does not apply online. [Another fact I haven’t checked.]
- You may think you can but, these days, most of us can’t spot a fake or find a reliable way to check veracity.
Intriguingly, apart from occasionally flashing my badge, I was never asked to show my identity on entry to ANY of the fringe events – except this one. A person who said she worked for the New Statesman scanned everybody’s badge as they entered the auditorium. I asked why it was necessary and she didn’t know but took my email address and promised to get in touch with an explanation. (I am waiting with bated breath.) In the context of a discussion about personal privacy this was bizarre.
Alan Conochie – October 2025