Meeting of the Parliament 13 November 2019
I am pleased to be in the chamber today to debate the topic of artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies and the opportunities that they offer to the Scottish economy and society, as well as the challenges that they pose. It is an important topic, which increasingly touches many aspects of the lives of our constituents.
The Scottish Government has a vision to
“Use Scotland’s data to its full potential by driving innovation, improving public services and unlocking economic value—saving time, money and lives”.
We are mindful that data innovation can benefit the Scottish economy and improve the productivity and efficiency of organisations, including those in the public sector. It can also attract new businesses and highly paid jobs. In delivering our commitment in the programme for government to develop an AI strategy, we are trying to ensure that Scotland maximises the potential economic and social benefits of AI and sends a strong signal to the world about our ambition.
However, we also recognise that AI raises several important issues that need to be addressed urgently to ensure that it is used ethically and that people in Scotland can benefit from the changes that it will bring to how we live and work in the future. Our intent is therefore to develop a strategy that has the citizen at its heart and the benefits to the citizen as its core guiding principle to ensure that no one is left behind and the strategy is aligned with the national performance framework. Over the next year, the Government will work with the public, industry, public bodies and organisations, academia and beyond to set out Scotland’s ambitions, principles and priority actions on AI and a route to securing public support as the precursor to realising economic, social and environmental value.
Today is an opportunity to start that national conversation in the Scottish Parliament and I look forward to engaging with members across the chamber. I am sure that we will have a robust debate because, on the one hand, there are potential benefits and, on the other hand, there is a need to have a debate to ensure that citizens are at the heart of the strategy and are not left behind and that some of the negatives around AI do not cause them to feel concern and fear. I also hope that we can agree on the fundamentals that will enable the opportunities of AI and data-driven technologies to be realised for Scottish society and the economy, including having a strong ethical underpinning that has public support, as outlined in the motion.
There is no commonly agreed definition of AI among experts. For the purpose of the debate, we can think of AI as a set of techniques that are used to allow computers to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, translation between languages and decision making. Everyone will have heard media stories about AI that promise either utopia or dystopia but often both. AI is very much a misunderstood revolution and unwarranted hype and fears obscure the real opportunities that we need to seize and the real challenges that we need to overcome.