The UK Authorities has lately printed its official response (the ‘response’) to the general public session of March 2023 on its ‘pro-innovation method’ to AI regulation (for an preliminary dialogue, see right here). The response reveals little or no motion from the unique method and proposals and, regardless of claiming that important developments have already taken place, it primarily gives a governmental self-congratulatory narrative and restricted high-level particulars of a regulatory structure nonetheless very a lot ‘beneath building’. The publication of the response was coupled with that of Preliminary Steering for Regulators on Implementing the UK’s AI Regulatory Rules (Feb 2024), which I’ll remark in a subsequent put up.
A bit of explicit curiosity within the response refers to ‘Making certain AI finest apply within the public sector’ (at 21-22), which makes direct reference to using public procurement and the train of public sector shopping for energy as a regulatory lever.
This part describes some measures being put in place or deliberate to grab ‘the alternatives introduced by AI to ship higher public companies together with well being, training, and transport’, resembling:
‘tripling the variety of technical AI engineers and builders throughout the Cupboard Workplace to create a brand new AI Incubator for the federal government’ (para 41).
That is an fascinating dedication to constructing in-house functionality. It might nevertheless be fascinating to know whether or not these are new or reassigned roles, in addition to how the method of recruitment and retention is faring, given the huge difficulties evidenced within the latest evaluation by the Nationwide Audit Workplace, Digital transformation in authorities: addressing the boundaries to effectivity (10 Mar 2023, HC 2022-23, 1171).‘The federal government can also be utilizing the procurement energy of the general public sector to drive accountable and protected AI innovation. The Central Digital and Knowledge Workplace (CDDO) has printed steerage on the procurement and use of generative AI for the UK authorities. Later this 12 months, DSIT will launch the AI Administration Necessities scheme, setting a minimal good apply commonplace for corporations promoting AI services and products. We are going to seek the advice of on introducing this as a compulsory requirement for public sector procurement, utilizing buying energy to drive accountable innovation within the broader financial system’ (para 43).
That is additionally an fascinating aspiration, for a number of causes. First, the GenAI steerage could be very generic and solely highlights pre-existing (additionally very generic) steerage on the right way to perform procurement of AI (see screenshot beneath). This may hardly be seen as a significant growth of the prevailing regulatory framework. Second, the announcement of an ‘AI Administration Necessities’ scheme appears to be mirrored on the ‘Cyber Necessities’ scheme within the space of cyber safety, regardless of important variations and the a lot increased stage of complexity that may be anticipated from an ‘all-encompassing’ scheme for the administration of the myriad dangers generated by the deployment of AI.
