Professor Rebecca Williams Contributes to Groundbreaking Research Project on Artificial Intelligence Accountability

Blackstone-Heuston Fellow in Law at Pembroke, Professor Rebecca Williams is working on an exciting new project around Artificial Intelligence (AI) accountability that seeks to make future AI systems more transparent and accountable. The Realising Accountable Intelligent Systems (RAInS) project aims to set up auditing systems akin to ‘black box’ flight recorders for AI systems.

The University of Oxford is a key player in this multi-disciplinary initiative, which also involves the Universities of Aberdeen and Cambridge. The project is backed by a funding of £1.1 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and was a direct response to the EPSRC’s 2017 call for research to further the understanding of Trust, Identity, Privacy and Security (TIPS) issues in the Digital Economy.

Working with the public, the legal profession and technology companies, RAInS aims to create prototype solutions to allow developers to provide secure, tamper-proof records of intelligent systems’ characteristics and behaviours. These records can then be shared with relevant authorities and in the event of incidents or complaints, further analysed to ensure transparency and accountability in future AI systems.

Professor Williams commented: ‘I am hugely excited to be involved in this project. From a legal perspective the transparency and accountability of these systems is vital and is inherent in any concept we might have of fairness.’

Her role in the project is to identify the challenges posed to existing law by new AI technology and to consider how the law can respond. She explained: ‘Regulation of some kind will obviously be necessary, but it’s important to think about how the law can best incentivise optimal use of these systems so that we can reap the benefits they offer, while also maintaining transparency and thus fairness.’

'It’s vital, though, that any such efforts by lawyers should be led by the technology itself; the law can only require what is technically possible, and any form of law or regulation is much more likely to be successful if it is informed by a deep and detailed understanding of the technical context. I’m therefore particularly delighted to be part of such a strong interdisciplinary team on this project. The more closely lawyers can work with other disciplines in this kind of area, the more effective and suitable the resulting law is likely to be.’

Professor Williams will work on the project with Dr Jat Singh from the University of Cambridge, which is led by Professor Pete Edwards from the University of Aberdeen.

Find out more about RAInS and related research projects here.