Labhaoise Ní Fhaoláin

To say that AI is all-pervasive is now trite. However, despite its inescapable presence, society has yet to identify an effective way to oversee and control this technology. AI solutions which have an overall social benefit but which are also safe, trustworthy and legal are needed. “Control” in in this context can take many forms, from specific company guidelines through to legislative interventions, from soft regulation to criminal law sanctions. The lack of compliance with, or absence of, standards, regulation and laws in AI impacts trustworthiness. This is a weakness in the adoption and usage of AI. There has been criticism of the use of AI models, in the justice and healthcare systems, among others. The use of the COMPAS decision support tool in sentencing to assess recidivism, for example is controversial. Dressel (2018) found that the tool’s accuracy was not dissimilar to predictions made by people without any criminological experience and that race bias was a significant failing. Carter (2020) reviewed the ethical, legal and social implication of using AI in breast cancer care and emphasised the need for detailed discussion on when and what kind of AI should be deployed. On a global scale, the challenge being faced is how to control the development and deployment of AI solutions in a way that facilitates both progress and protection. This research investigates how a regulatory framework could be applied to AI and how we could best design a system to maximise adoption, oversight and compliance. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this research will test existing regulatory frameworks against the field of computer science. The research will require bridging the technical feasibility of measuring AI trustworthiness with socio- legal and regulatory practices and frameworks using and combining methods from a variety of disciplines. It will evaluate the hypothesis that a bottom up regulation approach will provide trustworthy AI solutions with measurable compliance in a simpler and more legally sound way than a top down product certification approach. This is an emerging and urgent challenge facing policy makers and this project will provide an integrated perspective on the techno-socio-legal challenge.