UTS Data Science Institute specialises in personalised and ethical artificial intelligence (AI), especially in consumer, retail, services and medical markets.

Professor Fang Chen and her team members are pioneers in exploring the interconnection between automation, bias, transparency, trust, explicability, user behaviour and impact in the design and application of artificial intelligences, having edited some of the first books on ethical AI.  

The emergence of worrying examples of AI use has led to a burgeoning collection of ethical frameworks from academic, industry and government parties.  While these are promising, they often amount to high-level guidelines only.  What is lacking is the translation of those guides into practical tools that industry can actually pick up and use to ensure that artificial intelligence solutions deliver value, without risking principles of equity, fairness and transparency.

In response, we are beginning the process of building specific tool sets that translate ethical frameworks into ethical action.  Our work provides a concrete use-case of ethical artificial intelligence in action, and will provide the foundation for a more expansive suite of tools that will enable industry to navigate the growing complexities of our contemporary ethical landscape.   

As law and regulation adapts to an increasing adoption of automated decision making, and responds to growing public concern regarding an increasing number of ethical failures in the space, these tools and the formal validation they provide, is likely to grow from valuable to essential over the next few years.

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