In a breakthrough development, Rolls-Royce has released a comprehensive ethical and trustworthiness framework, that will help businesses to check and balance their AI projects in a fair, ethical and trustworthy manner.
Available for free to download from the Rolls-Royce website, the toolkit is called Aletheia FrameworkTM, which has been named after the Greek goddess of trust and disclosure. It aims to address one of the biggest barriers to the widespread use of AI – mistrust. It is especially timely when the debate around ethical AI is going on in full throttle.
The company explains that the Aletheia Framework™ is essentially a checklist that invites organisations to consider the impacts of using artificial intelligence prior to deciding whether to proceed. It looks across a total of 32 facets of societal impact, governance and trust, and transparency and requires executives and boards to provide evidence that these have been rigorously considered.
Further, the framework includes a five-step continuous automated checking process, which tracks the decisions the AI is making to detect bias or malfunction.
Once fully implemented, businesses that follow the checks and balances within it can assure themselves that their AI projects are fair, trustworthy and ethical.
It aims to help business leaders, academics, technologists and even philosophers to explore the potential of AI while keeping ethics and trustworthiness at the forefront. “As we move rapidly to a more digital world, people have a right to expect that AI is used ethically and that it is a trustworthy partner for people and society. The Aletheia FrameworkTM provides the foundations for that to happen,” Warren East, Chief Executive Officer, Rolls-Royce said.
Notably, Rolls-Royce has used AI for years to analyse more than 70 trillion data points to decide fly time of engineers and its sustainability. “We’re now developing AI for quality inspections of critical components and it’s in the justification of applying artificial intelligence technologies to this activity that we have had to challenge ourselves to ensure it’s the right thing to do, and that it’s trustworthy,” said Caroline Gorski, Group Director of R2 Data Labs.
The Aletheia FrameworkTM has also been shared with experts from UNESCO, which is undertaking a global consultation on AI ethics. “AI will radically change our world, but it is ethics that will shape how it looks. All stakeholders, whether public or private, must work on this together,” said Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences sector at UNESCO.
