Blog – Page 2 – Welcome

Dr Oldfield speaks at Sprite+ Fellows event

September 18, 2024

Dr Oldfield spoke at the Sprite+ forum on best practice in AI development and how professional accreditation closes the gap. The Institute of Science and Technology holds the only AI Professional Accreditation, led by Dr Oldfield and developed in conjunction with industry, government and academia. This accreditation provides a single source of truth and news for members of the body as well as access to webinars, training and slack channel communities. As per the empirical studies by Dr Oldfield and Holstein et al. as well as reports by the House of Lords it is crucial to close the gaps found within these multiple reports. Professional accreditation and best practice is key to developing ethical and robust AI.

Dr Oldfield speaks at CIVICA Forum

September 18, 2024

Dr Oldfield spoke at the CIVICA/Heilbronn forum on best practice in AI development and how professional accreditation closes the gap. The Institute of Science and Technology holds the only AI Professional Accreditation, led by Dr Oldfield and developed in conjunction with industry, government and academia. This accreditation provides a single source of truth and news for members of the body as well as access to webinars, training and slack channel communities. As per the empirical studies by Dr Oldfield and Holstein et al. as well as reports by the House of Lords it is crucial to close the gaps found within these multiple reports. Professional accreditation and best practice is key to developing ethical and robust AI.

Dr Oldfield speaks at the OR Analytics Summit

August 17, 2024

It was a pleasure to be invited to the OR Analytics Summit to speak on the AI Professional Accreditation and formalised best practice pipeline. I spoke on the benefit of having professional accreditation and the benefits of having dual accreditation if you work in more than one area in your professional life. For example, I use my CStat and CSci for court work as I have to have proof of qualifications and credibility to sit on court cases. I use my SFHEA for Higher Education and my APAI and CSci for AI work. Having these designations gives much more breadth to my professional life. Belonging to a professional body really helps keep my practice present and allows me to network with like minded professionals. I can also inout into policy and legislation through returns from the relevant professional body. It was a pleasure to hear from such areas as healthcare and AI development as well as Higher Education and Government. The OR Analytics Summit works well in bringing high level professionals together to share best practice.

Dr Oldfield speaks at the AI Ethics, Risks and Safety Conference

August 17, 2024

Dr Oldfield spoke at AI Ethics, Risks and Safety Conference. Topic: Practitioner Challenges in AI and the new global AI Accreditation. It was a pleasure to speak at this conference and to hear about projects from all over the AI ecosystem. It is important to attend conferences to both update your understanding of what is happening in the world but also to network with people working within your industry. The topics ranged from the ICO work on privacy to Ethics in AI and the Institute of Science and Technology AI Professional Accreditation. Standards and safety were also represented by try Institute for AI Safety. This is something the Institute of Science and technology is working a lot on with partners at the Turing, BSI, IEEE and CEN/CENELEC. There was a lot of interest in the professional accreditation and I’m pleased to say we had many new joiners to our slack channel and the IST. We look forward to mentoring professionals through to accredited status.

Dr Oldfield speaks at International Conference on Gender Research. Topic: Women in Tech: challenges and recommendations

June 22, 2024

At the International Conference on Gender Research Dr Oldfield presented and empirical study on women in tech and the challenges they face. In the media we are sometimes told that women have increase equality in the workplace and suffer no detriment by having a family. Even that they have more opportunities now than even before. Whilst being true in some areas this is not true overall, and especially in tech. Women are still experiencing discrimination, inequality, job loss, lack of opportunity for careers and jobs as well as being held back in many circumstances. This is not where we should be in 2024. The conclusions of this paper in some ways take us back over 100 years and show that we have not made anywhere near the level of progress we should have made. From lack of childcare, inability to afford childcare, discrimination due to women having a family and ongoing issues with misunderstandings of women specific challenges the workplace can be very hostile to women. This must change. The IST (Institute of Science and Technology) is committed to making a difference and the Women in Tech group is continuing to work with a group of scholars and government to

Dr Oldfield working with Turing on Business Competency Framework

June 22, 2024

Dr Oldfield has been part of the advisory group to the Turing on the new Business Competency Framework. With version 2 launching in 2026 it has been important to involve the IST, a body of AI Professionals and Experts, in the creating of this critical piece of work. . From providing a voice for the community to providing professional accreditation and quality marks the IST is the global leading body for AI. Providing calls for evidence into government, working with the EU and international Governments, working on funded projects on education and safe development of autonomous systems as well as impacting gender and diversity within AI the IST preforms a critical role in formalising the discipline of AI.

Dr Oldfield speaks at British Science Week

June 22, 2024

British Science week is an excellent time for scientists of all walks of life to come together to discuss their profession. In this session Dr Oldfield discussed how we can develop technology safely and robustly whilst not stifling innovation. A key element of this talk was to alert the community to the fact that every one of them is a subject matter expert and with either use, develop or be affected by AI within their lifetime. Therefore their expertise is extremely valuable and their challenge is critical of systems to be robust and safe.

Dr Oldfield speaks at LSE Analytics in Action Series

June 22, 2024

Speaking at the analytics in action series is a good opportunity to discuss issues that are being constantly raised with the AI community. For example, how do we formalise the discipline, how do we act on legislative requirements, how do we model safely and robustly? In this session Dr Oldfield introduced the new professional accreditation for AI Practitioners by the Institute of Science and Technology and also the Educational Quality mark that the IST now awards to academic and commercial training providers. This goes some way to closing the gaps that the QAA refuse to deal with by updating the critical benchmark statements on Maths/Stats and OR. It also answers many of the recommendations within Dr Oldfield’s empirical studies and published papers.

Dr Oldfield speaks at the National Technicians Development Forum

June 22, 2024

Dr Oldfield spoke to the National Technicians Development Forum on how AI is filtering into the lab and how practitioners can work with advanced technology. It is increasingly important that subject matter experts are able to understand models within their discipline. These models should have all the relevant paperwork and transparency to be understood and where that does not exist it should be challenged. Technicians are often overlooked, which is a critical failure. When we model in government we don’t exclude military or policy advisors who know their area. These post holders are critical team members for model development. The same goes for technicians and end users. We don’t exclude the public from being involved in public service AI development because in the end it is they who have to access and use it. Being aware of who needs to be on the team and how to develop robust and safe AI is a critical endeavour. It starts with making sure the subject matter expert is an integral member of the team.

Dr Oldfield Speaks at Westminster City Council

June 22, 2024

Dr Oldfield spoke on how to develop Ethical AI Systems. The methods that should be used in order to construct complex systems and the people in the room are often not the right ones to achieve safe and robust outputs. As always with resource problems and budgets there is never time to do the ‘thinking phase’ upfront. This is even more relevant in government where amide;l can affect users accessing services or being discriminated against. The discussion moved into freedom of speech issues and how, when we police ‘politically correct’ speech we can then isolate users from services. We have to understand that not everyone uses the same words and what is out today is in tomorrow or might mean something different next year. Therefore we cannot just ban words and language or set ourselves up as arbiters of free speech. Our mission is to help people access services in whatever way we need to. This applies in large measure to chatbot type services.