The Bigger Picture - Karin Woodley talks with Stuart about the role charity should be playing in the development of AI

Episode 5 - The Big Picture.

To date, we’ve had four episodes talking to tech leaders in charities, a trustee, and a business change consultant. This week, we’re switching things around a little and take a big step back to get some perspective and try to understand the bigger picture.

But first… what’s happened in the past fortnight?

After a week off, we’ve now found ourselves in the midst of a general election campaign in the UK - where to date we haven’t yet had any big focus on charities or AI. There was a lot of concern that with 2024 being the year when more people would vote than any other in history, the confluence with AI and the potential for misinformation would pose a risk to the future of democracy. Indeed the statistic that just over 2 billion people will be eligible to vote in national elections in 2024 is slightly mind-boggling. A bad year for misinformation could have significant consequences.

Eight of the ten most populous nations have elections this year - we’re already 75% of the way through (with three happening in the past week, and EU elections happening right now). We’ve got through Bangladesh, Pakistan, Russia, India, South Africa and Mexico, leaving just the USA and Brazil, sandwiched nicely around Halloween.

And what have we seen of AI election interference - well - as far as we know, it’s been less dramatic than thought. This paper in Nature suggests that (albeit from a small sample group), there was significant distribution of deepfakes in the run-up to the India election. A similar story circulated in the press. But the overwhelming story suggests this disinformation wasn’t much more advanced than previous years - with many pretty low-tech deepfakes.

In the UK, we’ve had the usual run of misinformation stories - but the apparent fakes that have been appearing on social media, don’t seem to be much more serious in terms of misinformation than much of what we’ve always read in print content (where we’ve known to be alert for bias). Hopefully, by 5th November, we’ll be able to say that AI election interference in 2024 was the firework that fizzled - but definitely too early to tell currently. There is a large amount of money and tech in US politics, so we could have a few Halloween surprises to come.

In Cyber news… Not really AI, but there is a constant stream of Cyber news to fill any tech newsletter - last week we had Santander and Ticketmaster - with possibly a common link. This story is worth reading about - just for the sheer scale of the hack.

And this week, on a much smaller scale, but most likely much more targeted we had a suspected ransomware attack on a provider of pathology services to many major London hospitals.

I’m going to keep Cyber news in this newsletter - because it’s a related area - and senior leaders in any organisation need to have a good understanding of Cyber risks.

The Podcast

This week’s episode features:

Karin Woodley CBE - Chair at The Race Equality Foundation

Stuart McSkimming - Podcast host, independent consultant and experienced CIO with over twenty years experience in the charity sector

Listen at https://virtuevirtuosity.com, search for ‘Virtue & Virtuosity’ on your podcast player, or scroll down to the bottom of this newsletter for links to the latest episode on your chosen player. If it’s all too difficult, just go to YouTube for it (no-one else seems to listen to it on YouTube - but if you start listening there, I might be persuaded to start making this a video-podcast).

Virtue & Virtuosity Episode 5: The Big Picture - AI, Bias and the role of charity in promoting better use of AI

This week we talk to Karin Woodley CBE. We look at the challenges for AI in terms of bias and ethics. We hear Karin’s view on how humans struggle with bias - and how this can only make things more complicated for AI. We also hear a call-to-action to Governments, Charities (Large and Small), and most specifically big tech companies - to do more work together to address the risks. Have a listen if you want to hear the full interview.

Coming up next week

We’ll be looking at private sector and social enterprises that are delivering technology change - and understand what the broader charity sector can learn.

And finally

Not tech-related as far as we know, but hopefully by the time you read this, we’ll know the source of the mysterious e.Coli outbreak. At the time of writing, on Thursday evening, cooking dinner for the kids seemed like Russian roulette. Each member of my family got a different dinner. Will report back tomorrow if our process of elimination identified the culprit.

Feedback

I’m really keen on feedback - this podcast and newsletter is for you - for the sector, so don’t forget, drop me a line [email protected], if you’d like me to showcase anything you’re doing on AI in your charity, if you have a suggestion to include in the newsletter, or if you have a great story to tell in the podcast.

Podcast Links

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https://virtuevirtuosity.com

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