Transparency data

Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation Minutes - Board Meeting 18

Updated 12 October 2023

This transparency data was withdrawn on 16 October 2023

This content is no longer current. The Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) Advisory Board closed on 9 September 2023.

20th May 2021

Remote Board Meeting^{[footnote 1]}

Attendees (dialling in)

• Roger Taylor (RT)
• Rt Revd Dr Steven Croft (SC)
• Prof Luciano Floridi (LF)
• Dame Patricia Hodgson (PH)
• Prof Lord Robert Winston (RW)
• Dr Adrian Weller (AW)
• Richard Sargeant (RS)
• Dr Susan Liautaud (SL)
• Kriti Sharma (KS)
• Edwina Dunn (ED)
• Baroness Kate Rock (KR)

Guest speakers:

• Felicity Burch (FB): Executive Director of the CDEI from August 2021

CDEI staff:

• Ollie Buckley (OB)
• Jessica Smith (JS)
• Mark Durkee (MD)
• Louise Pakseresht (LP)
• Benedict Dellot (BD)
• Sam Cannicott (SC)
• Alex Lawrence-Archer (ALA)
• Ben Lyons (BL)
• CDEI Team Members

Item 1: Welcome

The Chair welcomed the Board to the remote meeting.

• There were no new interests declared.
• The Board was content with the minutes of the previous meeting subject to minor changes.
• The Chair thanked CDEI’s Executive Director, OB for his work establishing the CDEI and welcomed his successor, Felicity Burch to the meeting. Felicity is due to join the CDEI in August and JS confirmed that she would cover Ollie’s role until Felicity is appointed.

Actions:

• CDEI team to publish last meeting’s minutes on gov.uk.

Item 2: General Update

The Executive Director set out changes to the CDEI’s ways of working, including a more matrix approach to resource management and a closer relationship with DCMS. Teams updated on:

• the CDEI’s work on active choices. The project tests ways to give users more choice over their experience online. The work provides evidence of the benefits of active choice prototypes; as well as examples of evidence-based tools and techniques which could help platforms to design interfaces that empower users to make active choices. One member suggested this is work that platforms should be doing themselves. The Chair said that the purpose of this work is to show what is possible in a small-scale project, conducted without the funding or expertise available within technology companies, as well as to understand if there is an opportunity for government to pursue a regulatory approach;
• the CDEI’s contribution to OAI’s AI Strategy, where the CDEI is supporting the AI governance aspects of the strategy in particular.

Item 3: 2 Year Review

JS provided an update on the recruitment process for the refreshed CDEI advisory board and Chair, highlighting the strong applications and robust and fair process. She said that ministers were considering the make-up and role of the refreshed advisory board.

The team explained that the CDEI would shortly be publishing a two year review, highlighting its achievements since its establishment and looking ahead to priorities and challenges in the future. They said it would be released concurrently with the Government’s response to the CDEI’s major reviews on algorithmic bias and online targeting.

In response the Board:

• welcomed the government’s positive draft response to the CDEI’s reviews;
• suggested that the CDEI should provide a concise summary of the activities and insights generated in the Centre’s first years of operation within the two year review and supported the proposal of publishing such a document.

Item 4: Work Programme

The team explained that the CDEI’s work programme is broken down into three themes: data sharing, responsible public sector innovation and AI assurance and provided examples of live projects in each. Each project is underpinned by objectives and metrics so that we can successfully track their impact. The team said there is increasing demand for CDEI’s expertise and we are developing a project pipeline to more strategically prioritise requests for the CDEI’s input.

In response the Board:

• welcomed the work programme;
• suggested that the CDEI should ensure that its work is as impactful as possible and that advisory board members could play an important role in attracting commissions from potential partners;
• highlighted the importance of strong relationships across Whitehall.

Item 5: International

The team provided a summary of the CDEI’s international work and the European Commission’s recently proposed legal framework for AI. In response, various members of the board made the following comments:

• commented that the EC’s definition of AI was very broad and noted their cross-sector horizontal approach to regulation;
• referred to potentially prohibitive aspects of the proposed regulation and said the UK should focus on mitigating specific barriers to data sharing;
• suggested that the UK should be realistic about playing a brokering role between the US and EU on AI regulation. They said that the EU’s regulatory approach will set the international standard and that companies would much prefer a single, clear regulatory approach to a mix;
• said that the UK would be able to operate flexibly around the edges of the EU framework but that we will need to have regard to its core principles.

Close

The Chair closed the meeting and thanked the Board for their support during his tenure.

1. The Board meeting happened remotely via online video conference due to Government guidance to work from home, in response to Covid-19, coming into effect from 17th March. ↩