Techpoint 2024 Norway: Enforcing Value-Based AI Utilization

Greetings from Kristiansand, Norway, and the Techpoint 2024 conference. This event highlighted one of Europe’s strengths in AI development: a value-based approach in AI development and leadership.

 Solja Sulkunen, 15.10.2024

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As we embrace digital transformation, it’s crucial to align our efforts with core values such as ethics, transparency, inclusivity, and safety. Technology and digital transformation should ultimately serve people and enhance their quality of life by respecting human values and rights.

The Techpoint 2024 conference in Norway featured a day full of inspirational speakers, ranging from tech giants to AI startups, researchers, and politicians. The event showcased a commitment to a digital future that respects human values, fosters innovation, and ensures inclusivity. Two approaches to value-based AI usage emerged more prominently than others – national commitment and how businesses can ensure ethical use of AI. FAIR’s project manager Solja Sulkunen will shed light on the topic for us now.

Norway’s Digital Readiness

Norway is eager to increase its digital readiness by ensuring access to high-speed broadband for everyone, while maintaining personal privacy of the users, and enabling effective data utilization and leveraging AI for both public sector and business advancements. The focus is on data sharing and nurturing trust. Norway aims to enable the provisioning, sharing, and utilization of data among public organizations, individuals, and companies. Trust is built through continuous dialogue and an inclusive approach to leading change. Norway has set an impressive goal to have 80% of its public sector utilizing AI in a relatively short time span. However, public sector digitalization cannot proceed without collaboration with the private sector, particularly in areas like health data sharing, for example. Also shared values should be agreed upon to ensure commitment and alignment.  

Ethical AI in our fingertips

National commitment and support are crucial in driving innovation. However, it is as important to ensure that the solution providers, too, commit to use AI for good, and are transparent and inclusive in their operations. Quite many of the basic service design methodologies in solution development apply also here. Below you can find recommendations for businesses to better adapt the value-based approach into their work:

 

  • Use AI with good intentions
    Many AI tools are already available to help people manage their daily tasks better and shift the focus to what matters – innovating, being curious, formulating the right questions to reveal the root causes of identified problems, and maintaining humane, empathetic interactions with colleagues, collaborators, families – the people around us. But what AI is used for in a wider scale, depends how solution developers decide to use it. With this said, it is increasingly important that the solution developers understand the power they have in their hands and actively decide to utilize it for good purposes with good and documented intentions.

  • Continuously evaluate your operations
    Write your thoughts on paper and identify what you do not yet know related to the ethics and safety of your solution. Evaluate the trustworthiness of your data. Try different solution providers and talk to people to expose yourself to new ideas and reveal your bias. If you decide to outsource your development work or deploy an AI application to perform operative tasks, make sure you understand how your vendor works and what abilities and motives they have to operate on the engineering or modification layers of development (Generative AI solutions). Be ready to change your thoughts and direction if needed. But remember to pilot new opportunities without drowning in worrying about the “what if’s” – just be sure you and your value chain’s intention is always good and all stakeholders are ready to “walk the talk”.

  • Proceed one step at the time
     Start with smaller investments to manage risks not only related to your financials directly but also related to the trustworthiness, transparency, and safety of your solution, and gradually scale up. Utilize existing or to-be-built sandboxes to safely test your AI solutions.

  • Visionary Leadership and Addressing Bias
    Language models and humans both exhibit biases. Addressing these biases and setting high ambitions are crucial for leaders. Be aware that the language we speak shapes how we give value to things and our visions. Without understanding our bias, a clear vision and high ambitions regarding the ethical and safe use of AI, there is a risk that we are too comfortable relying on past ways of doing things. Embracing alternative future trajectories and understanding what it means to be human in the age of high tech are vital. Lead with empathy.

By setting high ambitions and embracing collaboration and the value-based approach in AI development and utilization, Europe is ready to take the lead in the digital era. If you want to be part of the wave of digitalization in Europe and you want to discuss more about the opportunitites of AI and take action in it’s deployment, do not hesitate to contact FAIR through registering your company to our ecosystem, and we will be in touch with you. 

FAIR offers several services that help small and medium size companies develop value-based AI-products. For example, you can enhance your AI solutions with FAIR EDIH’s service “Human-AI Interaction Testing”. Gain valuable insights and optimize your user experience, for example from here Experiments and testbeds – Finnish AI Region.

That’s a wrap from Norway this time – stay tuned for the next tech-news splash across Europe!
Solja Sulkunen, Project Manager FAIR

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