Kay Firth-Butterfield: Head of AI and Machine Learning at the World Economic Forum

Episode 78 • 17th February 2020 • The Human Show: Innovation through Social Science • Paul Spain

Kay Firth-Butterfield is the Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the World Economic Forum. Prior to taking this position she was Executive Director of AI-Global and led the Ethics Advisory Panel of Lucid.ai. Kay has advanced degrees in Law and International Relations and has worked for the past three decades as a barrister, mediator, arbitrator, business owner, professor and judge in the United Kingdom. In the United States, she has taught at the undergraduate and law school levels and worked as a professional lecturer.

Kay is also a co-founder of the Consortium for Law and Policy of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the Robert E. Strauss Center, University of Texas and teach a course at the UT Law School for the Consortium: "Artificial Intelligence and emerging technologies: Law and Policy". With her role leading AI learning efforts for the World Economic Forum Kay works with governments and businesses to address the challenges and implications of implementing artificial intelligence, such as ethics, regulation and bias.

Today we dive into the complex topic of AI ethics. As a pioneer in this field, Kay has co-founded and led a number of initiatives that are shaping global and national policies on ethical AI. Kay believes that for humans and AI to work together, governments need to think about AI in a strategic and ethical way. She elaborates on this collaboration giving examples from her projects in which she is currently engaged assisting multiple governments around the world to write AI policies. Dialogues with the population are essential in order to achieve ethical AI, says Kay, and academics are in the best position to help. During this episode Kay guides us though this complex subject and shares her advice on how to create ethical AI for now and the future.

Mentioned in podcast:

World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/platforms/shaping-the-future-of-technology-governance-artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning

Deep Mind, https://deepmind.com/safety-and-ethics

AI GLOBAL, https://ai-global.org/

Lucid.AI, https://lucid.ai/

AI4ALL, http://ai-4-all.org/

AI FOR GOOD Foundation, https://ai4good.org/

Center of Humane Technology, https://humanetech.com/

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland on 21—24 January 2020 https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2020

AI Summit 2020 in Brussels on March 16-17, https://diievents.dii.eu/ai-summit/

WIRED Smarter, Conference in London on October 30, 2019, https://www.wired.co.uk/partnerships/wired-smarter/startups

Social Media: