Governance Node Seminar - Joel Fischer, University of Nottingham

In this talk I will provide an overview of the research within the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub, providing some motivating real-world examples and perspectives to frame a hopefully productive sense of the term TAS. We take a broad view on Autonomous Systems (AS); we view AS as systems involving software applications, machines, and people, that are able to take actions with little or no human supervision (see https://www.tas.ac.uk/our-definitions/). Some Autonomous Systems are already pervasive in society (e.g., algorithmic decision-making) while others are nascent (e.g., autonomous vehicles); and while there are many potential benefits, we unfortunately too often witness the wide-ranging negative consequences when AS ‘go wrong’ from downgrading A-Level results, to spreading hate speech, to wrongful conviction, to fatal accidents. We need expertise crossing a wide area of disciplines to tackle the challenges societies face, including in computer science and engineering disciplines, social sciences and humanities, and law and regulation. I will present some of the research within the TAS programme that is starting to address some of these challenges.