Seòmar agus comataidhean

Steve, you mentioned procurement and Government procurement. That may be another carrot. If we could look at Government and public sector procurement when it comes to AI and build in ethical standards there, would that be beneficial?

I will stick with trust but change tack a little bit. Obviously, there are huge opportunities for AI. A lot of that opportunity has not been grasped yet. A lot of folk do not trust AI completely. I will use an example that you gave, Steve Aitken, without breaking any commercial confidentiality. In our discussions, you talked about finding an AI solution for a company, but the company still stuck with the original project that it had in place because there was an edginess about the entire scenario. How do we ensure that we get trust across the piece to ensure that we get the absolute best out of these new technologies?

Again, it is about ethics and what we do as politicians, and as leaders, to fully utilise the technology but also to find other jobs for folk whose jobs may be superseded by the technology. We heard earlier that we could end up with fully automated industries, so we have decisions to make about what meaningful work we find for folk who are currently in those industries.

Are any other carrots required to ensure that business that is being carried out here is ethical?

Do you have anything to add to that, Leo?

Good morning. This is the third week of our AI investigation and, I must be honest, there have been ups and downs in the evidence that we have heard. There may be huge positives and benefits from the AI revolution but, at the same time, we have heard that there are a lot of worries. I am sitting here thinking about what the masses of people at home who are watching this committee will be thinking. I am being quite sarcastic in saying “masses”, but these things create worries. We have heard about fully automated industries, and billion-dollar companies run by one person. We have heard about all the changes that could take place because of AI and that may make people redundant—some would say in more ways than one. What are the positives for those folk who may be sitting at home thinking, “Where do I fit into all this?”

I will return to your earlier important point about the one-person, billion-dollar company. We already have on the planet billion-dollar—trillion-dollar—companies that are at the forefront of all of this. Some would argue that they are not ethical now because they do not pay the taxes that some of us believe that they should. You talked earlier about curing cancer and the possibility of new treatments coming into play, and we can already see the huge differences in terms of early diagnosis by AI applications. You asked, however, who those treatments would be available to. Will they be available only to the elites who run the big companies or will they be available to everyone? Those are the questions that we need to answer in order to deal with the pessimism about where this may leave a lot of folk out there.

We will wait and see whether we have those breakthroughs. Dex, could you also answer that question and maybe go a little bit further? We have had a discussion about the guardrails, the safeguards and what we need to do there but, as has been discussed, what is really required is an international framework agreement, which I think may be unlikely or very difficult to reach. How do we persuade the elites who are in control that an international framework is the right thing for all of us, and also for them, to follow?

Perhaps a computing science degree with philosophy is the way forward for all this.

Thanks for coming today. Convener, I should say that I have met with Steve previously for some good conversation.

I will stick with the ethics aspect. We have heard from others today about who is doing well. Leo Fakhrul, you mentioned the fact that Singapore is driving things forward but with limits. We are operating in a global context here. What we require for governance is an international framework, which may not be seen as beneficial to some of the elites out there. Is such a framework required for us to have the right governance here and to continue the trust that there obviously is in Scotland’s businesses?

I think that you talked earlier about AI-induced chaos. I am playing devil’s advocate here, because we have to in some regards. Earlier, you held up your smartphone; Dex also asked what we have done with that technology and whether it has been beneficial. I think that we may all agree that we have more communication, but is it meaningful communication? In terms of using AI, by means of which we can get more done, how do we ensure that what we do is meaningful? For example, probably every single one of us around this table is receiving a lot more mass communication that has been produced by AI. The temptation is, of course, to respond by using AI, which is not my bag, I have to say, at this time. I am not sure that some of that communication is as meaningful as it should be. We could see a situation where there is lots more communication, but would it be worthwhile, meaningful and make a difference to our society? How do we get around some of those things so that we do not get to the AI-induced chaos that you talked about?