The last decade has seen a dramatic rise in computer power, in data and scientific break-throughs, as in deep learning and neural networks. Together, these advances have led to the emergence of data science and the resurgence of artificial intelligence (AI) – ‘machines that think’, as imagined in Alan Turing’s landmark research paper published in 1950.
Data science and AI have the power to change the world. When the history of the 21st century is written, it now seems inevitable that data, informatics and AI will have had as transformative an impact on society as any of the three previous phases of the industrial revolution.
This power means there are few things more important to the UK’s future prosperity and societal wellbeing than the ethical development and deployment of these technologies.