AI Regulation on the Horizon: UK Government Tackling Bias and Safety Concerns

Months after the prime minister vowed "not to rush" when setting up rules for new technologies, the UK Government is beginning to craft new legislation to regulate artificial intelligence.

It's likely that the new legislation would put limits on the production of large language models and technology that underpins AI products, such as Chat GPT.

Although it is not definite what this legislation would cover or when it would be released, an insider said it will likely ensure that companies developing the most sophisticated models share their algorithms with the government and provide evidence they have carried out safety testing.

Regulators, like the UK competition watchdog, have become increasingly worried about potential risks. These range from technology possibly embedding biases that impact specific demographics to the potential misuse of general-purpose models to produce harmful content.

Scott Lewis, SVP at Ataccama, said: "The most successful companies in the future will be those which take full advantage of AI tools, using them to automate necessary yet repetitive manual work, such as data cleansing and transformation to produce good quality, governed data that is critical for trustworthy AI outcomes, and reallocating employees to more valuable, meaningful work.

AI also helps to accelerate insight mining from business data, providing deeper analysis that can support decision-making, such as identifying trends in customer behavior, potential product innovation, and areas of improvement.

“Having already made such a strong commitment to AI investment and innovation, it’s important that the UK takes a balanced, measured approach to regulating AI's potential risks without stifling its clear benefits if it wants to achieve its vision to become a global AI leader."