Paul Kunert, The Register; IT body proposes that AI pros get leashed and licensed to uphold ethics
"Creating a register of licensed AI professionals to uphold ethical standards and securing whistleblowing channels to call out bad management are two policies that could prevent a Post Office-style scandal.
So says industry body BCS – formerly the British Computer Society – which reckons licenses based on an independent framework of ethics would promote transparency among software engineers and their bosses.
"We have a register of doctors who can be struck off," said Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO at BCS. "AI professionals already have a big role in our life chances, so why shouldn't they be licensed and registered too?"...
The importance of AI ethics was amplified by the Post Office scandal, says the BCS boss, "where computer generated evidence was used by non-IT specialists to prosecute sub postmasters with tragic results."
For anyone not aware of the outrageous wrongdoing committed by the Post Office, it bought the bug-ridden Horizon accounting system in 1999 from ICL, a company that was subsequently bought by Fujitsu. Hundreds of local Post Office branch managers were subsequently wrongfully convicted of fraud when Horizon was to blame."
