How the AAIP’s research is answering the questions about how to develop and regulate safe autonomous systems By Simon Smith It’s becoming clear that autonomous systems, such as self-driving cars, medical devices that decide on drug dosages, and robots working alongside humans, pose specific challenges to the way in which…

Six trends that signpost the direction for regulating autonomous systems — By Simon Smith In a previous post we talked about how the three characteristics of autonomous systems were challenging the way in which regulatory frameworks are traditionally developed and applied: 1. the transfer of decision-making capability and authority from humans to systems 2. the increased use of data-driven techniques and…

by Simon Smith Autonomous systems, from robotic warehouse pickers to medical devices that administer our drugs, are approaching widespread use amidst intense investment and expectation of benefits and returns to many stakeholders. It is also becoming clear that they have the potential to cause harm in ways that regulators and…

by Professor Simon Burton In my previous blog posts, I outlined a framework for building an assurance argument for the safety of automated driving systems. The framework combines many different approaches that are currently under development. …

Data that reflects the intended functionality By Lydia Gauerhof The performance and robustness of Machine Learning (ML) approaches, such as Deep Neural Networks (DNN), rely heavily on data. Furthermore, the training data encodes the desired functionality. However, it is challenging to collect (or generate) suitable data. …

Moving towards safe autonomous systems — By Professor John McDermid OBE FREng Autonomy, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML): buzz words that crop up in the news, social media, and conversation every day. The societal benefits of such technologies are evident now more than ever — quicker diagnosis of illness and disease, contactless delivery from a…

Recommendations for law, policy and ethics of AI for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — This is my final article in this series; a great way to start the New Year! After discussing the liability of autonomous systems under the UAE law, identifying gaps and comparing to other regimes, this article, in a way, is the practical conclusion of my research and so I will…

The role of human factors in the safe design and use of AI in healthcare — News headlines and research studies extol the virtues of artificial intelligence (AI), claiming that it can outperform a human clinician in tasks such as breast cancer screening and the treatment of sepsis. But a study in the British Medical Journal earlier this year found that such claims were exaggerated. Too…

Products, systems and organisations are increasingly dependent on data. In today’s Data-Centric Systems (DCS) data is no longer inert and passive. Its many active roles demand that data is treated as a separate system component. By Dr Alastair Faulkner and Dr Mark Nicholson Data is challenging to manage and control…