Algorithms have the potential to wreck lives. Take, for instance, the fiasco surrounding 2020’s A-level results in England and Wales, when many thousands of students who’d been unable to sit their exams rebelled against the unfair grades they’d been assigned by a flawed algorithm.
Yet algorithm-based artificial intelligence (AI) systems are powerful tools that could radically improve the work of many public bodies. They offer new possibilities for the delivery of many services, advances in healthcare research, efficiencies in the labour market and the personalisation of online services.
According to the Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research group that monitors the use of data and AI, algorithmic decision-making systems are being deployed at an unprecedented speed in both the business world and the public sector. They are becoming ubiquitous, embedded in everyday products and services.