Public trust of AI is now urgent, say MPs

MPs Ben Everitt and Iain Stewart have hailed the A1 Safety Summit at Bletchley Park as a landmark moment for both Artificial Intelligence and for Milton Keynes.

AI can be a force for good as long as humanity learns to use it properly but the risks of getting it wrong could be “catastrophic”, Mr Everitt told the A1 Summit Decrypted event.

Mr Stewart said the urgent issue now is to generate trust of AI among the public. “This week has been incredibly significant,” he said. “It has put us as a city on the map and the summit is only the start of the journey, the most significant staging post yet.” n Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan has hailed Milton Keynes as the ‘vibrant tech capital’ during a debate in the House of Commons. opportunities it creates. It is the new art of the possible and we need to think big and work back. The fear is there, for sure, but let’s think about how we can make it work.”

She was replying to comments by Milton Keynes North MP Ben Everitt in the House following her attendance at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park.

Mr Everitt highlighted the city as an ‘excellent place to invest in technologies like AI and robotics’.

AI invokes ethical considerations too, she added. “Just because we can does not mean that we should. We need to think about what can go wrong but it does not mean that we should not do things - we need to manage the risks.”

Essentially, AI is about adapting rather than adopting in order to act differently and in response to the opportunities AI will create. we

“We need to make sure that people feel empowered and not replaced,” Ms Baker said.

Mr Salvin said that AI creates a huge opportunity for the tech and wider business community in Milton Keynes. “We have to seize the opportunity AI presents but we must put in the guardrails and controls so that we can do so safely and ethically.

“This is part of our commitment to invest in our Milton Keynes community,” he added. “We want to make Milton Keynes the leading tech city in the UK.”

They recognise that both parties have a crucial role in testing the next generation of AI models. This includes collaborating on testing against potentially harmful capabilities, including critical national security, safety and societal harms. And governments as well as companies will now have a role in seeing that external safety testing of frontier AI models occurs.

AI Safety Summit delegates agreed to invest in public sector capacity for testing and other safety research, to share outcomes of evaluations and to work towards developing shared standards. This will lay the groundwork for future international progress on AI safety in years to come.

It is one of the several significant steps achieved at the Summit on building a global approach to ensuring safe, responsible AI, including the UK’s launch of a new AI Safety Institute.

Professor Yoshua Bengio, a member of the UN’s Scientific Advisory Board, is to lead a scientific assessment of existing research on the risks and capabilities of frontier AI and set out the priority areas to inform future work on AI safety.

The findings will support future AI Safety Summits. The Republic of Korea is to co-host a virtual summit in the next six months. France will host the next in-person Summit later in the year.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “Until now the only people testing the safety of new AI models have been the very companies developing it. We should not rely on them to mark their own homework, as many of them agree.”

The State of the Science report will help policymakers worldwide to keep up with the rapid pace of change in AI. Demis Hassabis, cofounder and chief executive of Google DeepMind said: “Getting this right will take a collective effort from governments, industry and civil society.”

Bringing the leading nations and corporates together at Bletchley Park to agree a global understanding in the form of the Bletchley Declaration on AI safety is a success in its own right, the MPs said.

“The issue now is trust,” said Mr Stewart, MP for Milton Keynes South. “The challenge is to get the public to see that AI can be a force for good and not a threat to the human race. The jury will be out on that for many people. People will be terrified of what AI could potentially lead to.”

He likened AI to the computer systems used in planes and trains, in which millions travel regularly. “The challenge is to engender that trust in the majority of the population so that they see what AI can add to health and tackling climate change, where it can do so much good,” said Mr Stewart, who chairs Parliament’s Transport Committee.

Joining him at the event, Milton Keynes North MP Mr Everitt said that education of the benefits and risk of AI is now paramount. “We are now on the cusp of developing an intelligence that has the consciousness of a life form, that is non-organic and giving it the ability to use our

Ms Donelan said: “I absolutely agree with my Honourable Friend. I could not have thought of a better place to host this international summit than Bletchley Park and it is not just me that thinks that. All of our delegates remarked how important it was to host it at such a historic venue and so close to the vibrant tech capital Milton Keynes.” language. It is existential and we should be talking about it.”

The potential risks are considerable, he added. “They are far away but they could be catastrophic if we get it wrong so the building blocks have to be put in place now. It comes down to education.

“I am very optimistic that we have a global community that can rise to the challenge of developing AI safely.”

Milton Keynes is well placed to take full advantage of AI’s development, Mr Everitt added. “Milton Keynes is where it is at when it comes to applying technology and investing in the future we want to see,” he said. “We should be incredibly proud of everything we have done and be really positive about the future.”

Mr Stewart said the city should take ‘immense civic pride’ in its staging of the AI Safety Summit. “We should be proud of the fact that the name of Bletchley Park is once again resonating around the world.”

Workplace Culture & Engagement

HR teams are facing challenges in both recruiting and retaining skilled employees and in the impact that the quality of the digital workplace has upon each stage of the employee lifecycle, from onboarding to learning and development. Dave Page, founder and chief strategy officer at human experience management specialist Actual Experience, delves deeper.

The talent crisis continues to place enormous pressure on HR teams. The goal is not only to recruit and retain skilled employees but also to ensure each individual maximises their potential to deliver value to the business for as long as possible.

In a hybrid working environment, the quality of the digital experience now has a significant impact on those key employee lifecycle moments, from an employee’s first day through ongoing learning and development and extending their time in the business. HR has a compelling need to ensure the quality of each employee’s unique digital experience throughout their lifecycle.

Recruitment processes have become ever more rigorous in recent years as companies leverage a raft of new, intelligence-led and often digital processes to improve selection and entice talented individuals to the business. But how are companies adapting to the digital dependence of knowledge workers to transform the key moments throughout an employee’s lifecycle?

There is growing recognition of the power of digital technologies to improve onboarding, using a mix of video and virtual meetings alongside faceto-face interactions and fast-track access to both colleagues and key business information. The initial productivity growth curve has been condensed through the use of webinars and online training while ongoing career development can be tailored to meet the employee-specific learning and development needs.

This optimised employee experience is hugely valuable. It provides the chance to maximise productivity and to minimise the risk of the employee disengagement that presages a drop in performance and a letter of resignation. This experience is also, however, increasingly dependent upon the quality of each individual’s unique digital workplace.

So what happens to employees struggling with any form of digital friction?