DeepFest 2024: Importance of connecting people to develop AI policy

Pictured (left): Yonah Welker

Artificial Intelligence, as a technology, has been around for many decades, with experts citing how the genesis of this technology goes back to the 1950s when Alan Turing published “Computer Machinery and Intelligence”, which proposed a test of machine intelligence called ‘The Imitation Game’.

But with the more recent emergence of tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, the awareness of AI, along with its pros and cons, has never been higher than right now.

There’s also a saying that regulation often lags innovation. This is why many governments and regulators around the world are keen to ensure that AI policies protect citizens while ensuring that these same citizens can benefit from this technology.

One person who is taking the initiative in driving AI policymaking across the globe is Yonah Welker, a well-known explorer, public evaluator, and board Member of the European Commission Projects. 

Welker will be speaking at DeepFest 2024.

“Over the last few years we worked on two important things. First is repositories and landscapes of assistive and human-centred technologies driven by the AI systems and algorithms. In particular, we aimed to assess different ontologies, parameters and groups to serve public reports, social awareness or frameworks like the Accessibility Act,” Welker told DeepFest in a recent interview.

Welker says the second thing he has been focusing on is policy, crafting suggestions for stress-testing emerging AI regulation, Digital Services and Market, and other frameworks.

“Following the Bletchley Declaration, governments are looking to address a risk-based approach to algorithmic safety, focusing on areas, types, cases and affected populations. While there is general agreement, countries are still in different stages of deployment.

“An even bigger tendency is to see algorithmic impacts and mechanisms through the lens of complex national and social strategies. In particular, the US AI executive order requires safety assessments, civil rights guidance, and research on labour market impact, accompanied by the launch of the AI Safety Institute. In parallel, the UK’s governors introduced the AI Safety Institute and the online Safety Act, echoing the approach of the European Union to the Digital Services Act, with more focus on minors’ protection.

Importance of events such as DeepFest

Crucial to putting together any kind of regulation is getting key stakeholders into the same room, and Welker says events such as DeepFest help in this regard. 

“Our objective is to avoid silos and connect all stakeholders together to ensure human-centred development and adoption,” says Welker.

Welker goes on to illustrate examples of how a human-centred approach towards AI can help in our world today. 

“For instance, AI algorithms and systems play a significant role in supporting and accommodating disabilities from augmenting assistive technologies and robotics to creating personalised learning and healthcare solutions,” says Welker.

He goes on to explain how, for instance,  language-based AI models, can help deal with real human challenges and accessibility.

“Such solutions are frequently used in areas involving cognitive impairments, mental health, autism, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder and emotion recognition impairment, which largely rely on language models and interaction.

“With the growing importance of web and workplace accessibility (including the dedicated European Accessibility Act), Generative AI-based approaches can be used to create digital accessibility solutions, associated with speech-to-text or image-to-speech conversion. It may also fuel accessible design and interfaces involving adaptive texts, fonts and colours benefiting reading, visual or cognitive impairments. Similar algorithms can be used to create libraries, knowledge and education platforms that may serve the purpose of assistive accommodation, social protection and micro-learning.

“Finally, approaches explored through building such accessible and assistive ecosystems may help to fuel the assistive pretext – when technologies created for specific designated groups can be later adapted for a broader population, fueling technologies across areas of health, education, work, cities or ‘neurofuturism’ – bringing new forms of interaction, learning and creativity, involving biofeedback, languages and different forms of media,” says Welker.

On March 5 2024, Welker will be talking at DeepFest about the topic of disability centred AI and algorithmic policy.

As part of this topic, Welker will be exploring global economic opportunities and the future of social AI systems, algorithms, and policies that address disabilities, cognitive and sensory impairments, and autism spectrum disorders. He’ll also touch on areas of emerging AI and robotics-driven assistive technologies and accessible ecosystems, categories of systems, related policies, and regulation and their impact on a broader population and society, evolving adoption, literacy, and evaluation criteria.