AI (Artificial Intelligence) Governance
Dr Douglas Gurr, Director of The Natural History Museum discusses the importance of AI and how it can be utilised by the arts and cultures sector.
There has been much discussion recently about Artificial Intelligence (AI), with attention paid to the many concerns around risks it presents, and how it might threaten our safety and equality. There has been less discussion (at least in the UK) about the opportunities this transformative technology can create, and still less about what data, informatics and AI mean for the leadership and governance of organisations in general and cultural organisations in particular.
This is no small or short-term issue. The written history of the 21st century will no doubt confirm that this technology was at least as profound and far-reaching as the three earlier phases of the industrial revolution – mechanisation, electrification, and automation.
Leaders must get to grips with this. Most of us grew up in a world in which we could pull two main levers to change an organisation: people and money. Now there is a third: technology.
The ability to think systemically about how and where to deploy technology is not something that comes naturally to those of us who grew up in a more traditional world. Technology is no longer the sole domain of the IT department. Yet many leaders struggle to grasp even basic concepts such as how AI creates value, how long IT projects should take and what they should cost, and how to protect their systems and data.
As technology adoption accelerates this is a major challenge in all organisations, whether they are Government, commercial or non-profit. It is a particular challenge for those of us in the cultural sector where few individuals have spent time at the forefront of technology and AI.
What is AI’s role in the cultural sector? The name ‘Artificial Intelligence’ may not appeal to organisations which celebrate human creativity and ingenuity. But AI and automation tend to create value, not because they do something better than a human, but because they do it faster. Hundreds of millions or even billions of times faster. AI can make complex decisions about fine details at lightning speed.
Our sector is still at an early stage of adopting these technologies. But things are changing.
An optometrist might well be better than AI at detecting the presence of disease from a retinal eye scan, but they can only operate at human pace. But AI could look at every single eye scan conducted every single day in every high street optician around the country and select only the one in a thousand with the highest probability of indicating an undiagnosed major disease.
Closer to home we are now dating dinosaur fossils 30,000 times faster than before with 98% accuracy. The painstaking and time-consuming manual work is now being done by a trained machine.
Our sector is still at an early stage of adopting these technologies. But things are changing. The British Library’s Living with Machines project is applying state of the art machine learning to understand how we might better combine technological innovation and human ingenuity. The British Museum is exploring the use of a chatbot to help interpret its collection and provide learning opportunities for visitors and researchers. And at the Natural History Museum we are using AI to digitise our collection faster, forecast visitor numbers more accurately, automate technical support and date those dinosaur fossils.
What does this mean for boards? Like any governance challenge, a responsible board will want to assure itself that the organisation has a clear plan, has the resources in place to deliver it, and adequate supervision in place to keep the organisation on track. So here are three simple AI questions for Boards. Do you have a vision for the role of technology in your organisation? Are you equipped to deliver that vision? Do you understand the opportunities and risks associated with your approach?
None of this is easy – it will take focus, time and effort. But when we do come to write that history of the 21st century wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a chapter explaining how the UK cultural sector had called on its values and insights and shown leadership in adopting this technology to benefit society?
Dr Douglas Gurr
Director, The Natural History Museum
Chair, The Alan Turing Institute
Dr Doug Gurr is the opening keynote at Governance Now 2024: Imagine it Different, taking place on Wednesday 6 November 2024 at Senate House, London, WC1E 7HU. To read more about the conference and book your ticket, visit this page Early Bird tickets close end of play on Friday 2 August 2024.
