New York AI Bias Law Prompts Uncertainty

 New York AI Bias Law Prompts Uncertainty

The Wall Street Journal, Richard Vanderford

September 21, 2022

A law that goes into effect in New York City in January requires companies to audit their artificial intelligence (AI) hiring systems to assess whether they incorporate racial and gender biases. The law holds hiring companies liable for any biases and could impose fines for violations, but lacks clear guidelines for the AI audit process. While the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has not offered a timeline for when it will publish rules to implement the law, some companies already are taking steps to comply. Said Anthony Habayeb of AI governance software company Monitaur Inc., "Instead of waiting for someone to tell me what to do…I built controls around these applications because I know like with any software, things can and do go wrong."  ... ' 

Governance of AI: Podcast Use and Misuse of AI

 Podcast interview with  Miles Brundage head of Policy Research at OpenAI responsible for governance of AI,  See the gradientPub.substack.com.  AI misuse and Trustworthy AI.   In  The Gradient Podcast

Wharton: Planning for AI Risk Governance

Useful thoughts on the concept of governance of AI in the paper linked to below.

How Can Financial Institutions Prepare for AI Risks?

Apr 13, 2021 Analytics Wharton Research North America

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies hold big promise for the financial services industry, but they also bring risks that must be addressed with the right governance approaches, according to a white paper  by a group of academics and executives from the financial services and technology industries, published by Wharton AI for Business. 

Wharton is the academic partner of the group, which calls itself Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Risk & Security, or AIRS. Based in New York City, the AIRS working group was formed in 2019, and includes about 40 academics and industry practitioners. ..." 

Crypto Canon: From Andreessen Horowitz

Very nicely done resource here,  with lots of introductory and related information.

See the Andreessen Crypto Canon:  https://a16z.com/2018/02/10/crypto-readings-resources/    

From Andreessen Horowitz  Crypto Canon  Here’s a list of crypto readings and resources. It’s organized from building blocks and basics; foundations (& history); and key concepts — followed by specific topics such as governance; privacy and security; scaling; consensus and governance; cryptoeconomics, cryptoassets, and investing; ….   Feb 10th, 2018

More generally their Crypto related writings and ongoing coverage are in blog form here: https://a16z.com/crypto/ 

IBM Blockchain to Offer Smart Contract Options

This was the kind of direction we were looking at recently, and had indications that IBM was playing in the space.

IBM Blockchain to Offer Decentralized Smart Contract Option  in Coindesk

IBM is implementing the Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 base layer to support smart contract governance on its blockchain platform.

IBM Blockchain to Offer Decentralized Smart Contract Option
IBM is upgrading its enterprise blockchain solution to provide clients with a new decentralized governance option that will allow transaction parties to propose and amend smart contract parameters.

The blue-chip IT firm said last week that the IBM Blockchain Platform would carry over the changes in Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 – its base layer – claiming it "vastly improves" overall security and usability.

As well as improving performance and data privacy, IBM said in a blog post that the upgrade would completely change the platform's smart contract governance.

"IBM Blockchain Platform will support Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 and continue to add additional capabilities around the new decentralized smart contract lifecycle management and other new improvements," IBM said in its blog post. "In addition, the platform will allow the user to choose which version of Fabric to deploy and to migrate from one version to another."

Although IBM says it is "full steam ahead" with the Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 integration, it didn't provide a timeframe for when it expects to go live.  ... "

Governance in the Age of AI

Have been asked to look at governance issues.  ( see governance piece below from yesterday)  Data being used, Algorithms and resulting decisions and their results as seen by goals.    Here an HBR podcast of interest:

Governance in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is a powerful technology with capabilities that are open to use by state and non-state actors. In this conversation Azeem Azhar, De Kai, and Joanna Bryson discuss how governance should adapt as our institutions are challenged by unintended consequences of the technology and its creators.

Joanna, De Kai, and Azeem also discuss:

- Why rule-based systems fall short of protecting us against the unintended consequences of technology.
- The value of cross-cultural dialogue in establishing common values to guide the governance of AI globally.
- The role of the leading technology companies in regulating the industry.  .... "

Whitepaper: Data Governance, Knowledge Graphs

Continue to follow the problem of how the enterprise can most effectively support AI.   Just downloaded the following free white paper that addresses this from TopQuadrant:

https://www.topquadrant.com/knowledge-assets/whitepapers/

Are You Considering How AI May Help Your Information Management?

Then you will want to learn about the synergistic relationship between Data Governance, Knowledge Graphs, and enterprise applications of AI and Machine Learning (ML)  .... "

BlueTalon Acquired

Microsoft has acquired BlueTalon, lots of new work underway regarding how data is managed and valued and protected.   Following that trend here and elsewhere.

Microsoft Acquires BlueTalon: Building the Next Generation of Cloud Data Governance Together

By Eric Tilenius  BlueTalon       BlueTalon Blog

Today I’m thrilled to announce that BlueTalon has been acquired by Microsoft Corporation. Our technology and team is now focused on building deep data privacy and governance solutions as part of Azure Data.

This acquisition is a huge force multiplier on BlueTalon’s mission to make data easily and safely accessible across the enterprise by providing high quality data governance and compliance solutions.
Our journey started many years ago when Pratik Verma, our Founder, raised seed capital to build a company to scale from an innovative technology he created with his father, Rakesh Verma. I had the honor to join Pratik to build and grow BlueTalon. We realized the technology could be used to help govern data in new data systems such as Hadoop. Our customers soon started asking for us to extend our coverage to other databases – they were building large data estates that had a heterogeneous mix of data platforms. With the help of an amazing and talented team, we were able to build the first truly Unified Data Access Control™ solution to govern on-premises data estates.

BlueTalon enterprise customers increasingly began to migrate more and more of their data to the cloud and asked us to support them in that process. As we began exploring partnership opportunities with various hyperscale cloud providers to better serve our customers, Microsoft deeply impressed us. The Azure Data team was uniquely thoughtful and visionary when it came to data governance. We found them to be the perfect fit for us in both mission and culture. So when Microsoft asked us to join forces, we jumped at the opportunity..... ' 

Implementing Guidelines for AI

Good thoughts by fellow CACM blogger Ryan Carrier, with links to lots of practical things underway.

 Implementing Guidelines for Governance, Oversight of AI, and Automation   By Ryan Carrier 
Communications of the ACM, May 2019, Vol. 62 No. 5, Pages 12-13     10.1145/3317669

http://bit.ly/2tPI1Sk February 12, 2019

Governance and independent oversight on the design and implementation of all forms of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation is a cresting wave about to break comprehensively on the field of information technology and computing.

If this is a surprise to you, then you may have missed the forest for the trees on a myriad of news stories over the past three to five years. Privacy failures, cybersecurity breeches, unethical choices in decision engines, and biased datasets have repeatedly sprung up as corporations around the world deploy increasing numbers of AIs throughout their organizations.

The world, broadly speaking, combined with legislative bodies, regulators, and a dedicated body of academics operating in the field of AI Safety, have been pressing the issue. Now guidelines are taking hold in a practical format. .... " 

TopBraid and Knowledge Graphs

We actively used Semantic methods to organize our large and complex databases.

You can access a recent  update webinar recording and slides here:

Should you have any follow-up questions or would like to explore all of the capabilities in TopBraid EDG (http://www.topquadrant.com/products/topbraid-enterprise-data-governance/) in more detail please contact us at edg-info@topquadrant.com.

– TopBraid EDG as a knowledge graph for data governance
– It is designed to provide comprehensive, modular, and extendable Data Governance capabilities

“Using Knowledge Graph technologies TopBraid EDG supports integrated data governance across the ever growing numbers and types of data assets and  governance needs – because connections are important.

TopBraid EDG is an Enterprise Knowledge Graph for Data Governance
 TopBraid EDG, is a rich set of interconnected knowledge graphs expressing knowledge about how data is used and managed in the enterprise ecosystem
 These integrated knowledge graphs are ready to be enriched with your enterprise specific knowledge
 When this enrichment takes place, your enterprise is ready for implementing comprehensive data governance ... "

Small Coffee Farmers Seek Trust

And another example of Integrity-type usage  ....  Used to work in the coffee procurement and blending space, sometimes with small grower..   Might be an interesting place to look for small agricultural suppliers?

Coffee Farmers Bet on Blockchain to Boost Business   By Reuters 

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said in a recent report that blockchain technology could potentially address challenges faced by smallholder coffee farmers by "reducing uncertainty and enabling trust among market players."

Blockchain facilitates shared access to data maintained by a computer network, and can rapidly trace the myriad parties involved in food production and distribution.

The Agriculture Alliance of the Caribbean (AACARI) has embarked on a blockchain project, which entails auditing by accredited professionals to ensure farmers comply with Global GAP (good agricultural practices) standards, and a digital marketplace where buyers can find information about the produce.

Vijay Kandy of AcreCX, the company building AACARI's blockchain platform, said farmers could bypass intermediaries and deal directly with buyers via the auditing process. Buyers would no longer need to rely on middlemen to ensure farmers are adhering to Global GAP.  ... 

Knowledge Graphs, Governance, Learning and Much More

Have now been involved in a number of efforts in this area, worth understanding since Google has made an impressive run at this.  The article tells a historical journey I have traveled as well, we might finally be getting to real enterprise value.  And regulations like GDPR are forcing us to take notice of the need to really understand our data. The article is long, but has good points to make.

The Semantic Zoo - Smart Data Hubs, Knowledge Graphs and Data Catalogs   By Kurt Cagle Contributor in Forbes

COGNITIVE WORLDContributor Group
Sometimes, you can enter into a technology too early. The groundwork for semantics was laid down in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with Tim Berners-Lee’s stellar Semantic Web article, debuting in Scientific American in 2004, seen by many as the movement’s birth. Yet many early participants in the field of semantics discovered a harsh reality: computer systems were too slow to handle the intense indexing requirements the technology needed, the original specifications and APIs failed to handle important edge cases, and, perhaps most importantly, the number of real world use cases where semantics made sense were simply not at a large enough scope; they could easily be met by existing approaches and technology.


Semantics faded around 2008, echoing the pattern of the Artificial Intelligence Winter of the 1970s. JSON was all the rage, then mobile apps, big data came on the scene even as Javascript underwent a radical transformation, and all of a sudden everyone wanted to be a data scientist (until they discovered the fact that data science was mostly math). Meanwhile, from the dim recesses of the troughs of despair, semantics was readying itself for its own metamorphosis. Several semantic standards, including the SPARQL query language along with a new update language began seeing implementations by 2015.  Servers became faster and cheaper, and a rise of graphics processor units (GPUs) fueled by the gaming and entertainment industry provided tools for a new class of graph databases.

Meanwhile, the Big Data initiatives that had marked the early part of the 2010s was facing some real problems. The original promise of Hadoop as a map / reduce framework had ended up creating large numbers of data lakes that aggregated content but that sat under-utilized. Data scientists struggled to deal with dirty data that was really no cleaner for having been put in data lakes. JSON databases had grown in popularity, but they were proving hard to query in a consistent fashion, and all too many Hadoop projects ended up becoming large, slow, but cheap data graveyards for regulatory data (the kind of data that must be retained for five years). ..... "

Governance, Oversight and Auditing AI Systems

Good overview of the idea.  Increasingly will be proposed and required.   My own connection to legal AI systems will start to embrace this as well.     Adding this to my own investigation of regulation and liability aspects.

Governance and Oversight Coming to AI and Automation: Independent Audit of AI Systems  By Ryan Carrier in CACM

Governance and independent oversight on the design and implementation of all forms of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation is a cresting wave about to break comprehensively on the field of information technology and computing.

If this is a surprise to you, then you may have missed the forest for the trees on a myriad of news stories over the past three to five years.  Privacy failures, cybersecurity breeches, unethical choices in decision engines and biased datasets have repeatedly sprung up as corporations around the world deploy increasing numbers of AIs throughout their organizations.

The world, broadly speaking, combined with legislative bodies, regulators and a dedicated body of academics operating in the field of AI Safety, have been pressing the issue.  Now guidelines are taking hold in a practical format.

IEEE's Ethically Aligned Design is the Gold Standard for drawing together a global voice, using open source crowdsourcing techniques to assert some core ethical guidelines. Additionally, the standards body is deeply into the process of creating 13 different sets of standards covering areas from child and student data governance to algorithmic bias.    ..... " 

Knowledge Graphs and Governance Webinar

Will be attending.   Ultimately a crucial next step for AI and integration of Semantic data with enterprise data and metadata.

From TopQuadrant:

Join us for a webinar on February 21, 2019 at 11:30 AM ET.

Why are knowledge graphs relevant to data governance? The answer lies in key characteristics. Knowledge graphs are:

Flexible – graphs are the most flexible formal data structures
Evolvable – able to accommodate diverse data and metadata
Semantic – the meaning of the data is stored alongside the data in the graph
Intelligent – semantics of data are explicit and enable data validation and drawing conclusions and new information from the available data.

These qualities make knowledge graphs an ideal and, arguably, the only viable foundation for bridging and connecting enterprise metadata silos – the main goal of data governance.

Join us for this webinar where we will:
Provide a brief history of Knowledge Graphs
Give examples of what they are good for
Show how they provide a powerful platform for integrated data management and governance ... " 

UpComing Webinar on Knowledge Graphs

Its important to link knowledge with other forms of semantic databases.   As we use these methods they become easier to link and maintain to AI style applications.   We used TopQuadrant, I will attend.

WEBINAR: What are Knowledge Graphs? Why Are They Key to Successful Data Governance?

Join us for a webinar on February 21, 2019 at 11:30 AM ET

Robert Coyne of TopQuadrant writes:

Why are knowledge graphs relevant to data governance? The answer lies in key characteristics. Knowledge graphs are:

Flexible – graphs are the most flexible formal data structures
Evolvable – able to accommodate diverse data and metadata
Semantic – the meaning of the data is stored alongside the data in the graph
Intelligent – semantics of data are explicit and enable data validation and drawing conclusions and new information from the available data.
These qualities make knowledge graphs an ideal and, arguably, the only viable foundation for bridging and connecting enterprise metadata silos – the main goal of data governance.

Join us for this webinar where we will:

Provide a brief history of Knowledge Graphs
Give examples of what they are good for
Show how they provide a powerful platform for integrated data management and governance 

More info and registration: https://www.topquadrant.com/knowledge-graphs-webinar/ 

IBM, Ford and LG Link for Blockchain Cobalt Tracing

What appears to be a good example for the legitimate use of Blockchain models.   A sharable supply chain authentication/governance model.

Ford and IBM among quartet in Congo cobalt blockchain project  in Reuters, with more good detail at the link .... by Barbara Lewis

LONDON (Reuters) - Carmaker Ford (F.N), technology giant IBM (IBM.N), South Korean cathode maker LG Chem (051910.KS) and China’s Huayou Cobalt (603799.SS) have joined forces in the first blockchain project to monitor cobalt supplies from Democratic Republic of Congo.
The pilot, overseen by responsible-sourcing group RCS Global, aims to help manufacturers ensure that cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries has not been mined by children or used to fuel conflict.

Companies are under pressure from consumers and investors to prove that minerals are sourced without human rights abuses, but tracking raw materials throughout their journey is challenging.

The project announced on Wednesday has been quietly under way since December. Starting with industrially mined cobalt in Congo, it is monitoring supplies all the way to lithium-ion batteries for Ford vehicles.  .... " 

Watson Compare and Comply for Contracts

Also brought to my attention while looking at 'agreements' and 'contracts' as they integrate with work process flow, value generation and risk.      IBM Watson's look at this kind of problem

Watson Compare and Comply
Contract governance got you down?
AI can help streamline contract workflows to save time and improve accuracy. Learn more in the webinar at the link.

Introducing Watson Compare & Comply ...

Microsoft’s New Ethereum Blockchain Product

Microsoft enters the fray here.   Intriguing notion of proof of authority vs Proof of work.  Examining implications.

Microsoft’s New Ethereum Blockchain Product Gets Rid of Mining

Software giant Microsoft has debuted a new Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) product that allows businesses across industry verticals to deploy a flexible instance of Ethereum tailored specifically for enterprise environments.

Announced on Tuesday, Ethereum Proof-of-Authority on Azure allows enterprises to build applications on an Ethereum blockchain that is not secured by a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm and consequently does not require mining — features that are better suited for networks in which participants do not trust one another.

PoW “works great in anonymous, open networks where cryptocurrency promotes security on the network,” said Azure Global software engineer Cody Born. “However, in private/consortium networks the underlying ether has no value.”

Born explained that, since all participants on an enterprise blockchain network are known and reputable, governance can be separated from network operation.  ... " 

Background:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum

https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/microsoft-azure-blockchain.azure-blockchain-ethereum?tab=Overview

AI Governance Strategy

Not much detail here, but governance in this space is important,  regarding the data and results from the analyses.    And how it relates to ongoing maintenance of solutions.  In particular we found maintenance one of the biggest problems in delivering AI style approaches.  Further the inherent risk involved for any solution has to be modeled and tracked.  Start with an understood process model and build from there.

Opinion: How organizations can develop an AI governance strategy   By  Vikram Mahidhar

Today, many companies are entrusting their top business-critical operations and decisions to artificial intelligence. Rather than traditional, rule-based programming, users now have the ability to provide machine data, define outcomes, and let it create its own algorithms and provide recommendations to the business. .... " 

Freeing Your Metadata

Late reported to me, but of interest.  An area I worked on in the enterprise.  Needs more application of analytical methods.

26 April 2018 noon US Eastern for 60 minutes

Mandy Chessell & John Mertic “Enabling Your Products for Open Metadata” 

You must pre-register here: https://www.odpi.org/projects/data-governance-pmc

IBM & Linux Foundation:    Free Your Metadata

Building on the its success at establishing standards in the Apache Hadoop data platform, the ODPi now turns its focus to the next big data challenge – enabling metadata management and governance at scale, across the enterprise.

Talk Recording and Slides will be placed here:  http://cognitive-science.info/community/weekly-update/