COT's Top Four Commercial Issues - April 2018

Welcome to this month's edition of our commercial review, which features good news for IT suppliers looking to be considered for public sector work and the House of Lords showing there is nothing artificial about their intelligence.

Enjoy.

House of Lords publish report into the development and use of artificial intelligence

The Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence ("AI"), appointed by the House of Lords to consider the economic, ethical and social implications of advances in AI, has published its much anticipated report (the "Report").

The Report concludes that the UK is in a strong position to be among the world leaders in the development of AI but must put ethics first, as the sector develops. The Report is designed to support the UK Government in realising the potential of AI for society and the economy, and to protect from potential threats and risks.

The Report sets out the five principles that could become the basis for an AI code / framework:

AI should be developed for the common good and benefit of humanity. AI should operate on principles of intelligibility and fairness. AI should not be used to diminish the data rights or privacy of individuals, families or communities. All citizens should have the right to be educated to enable them to flourish mentally, emotionally and economically alongside AI. The autonomous power to hurt, destroy or deceive human beings should never be vested in AI. The Report has asked the Law Commission to investigate whether English law is "sufficient" when systems malfunction or cause harm to users.

From a regulatory point of view, the Report states that the Competition and Markets Authority must investigate the use of data by the bigger players operating in Britain (naming Google, IBM and Microsoft) warning that the increased consolidation of power and influence could monopolise the market at the expense of start-ups. The Report also recommends the responsibility of regulating AI systems should fall to existing regulators such as Ofcom, Ofgem and the Information Commissioner's Office rather than suggesting a new AI regulator.

Government to launch G-Cloud 10 in June 2018

The Government has announced that the new G-Cloud 10 framework will go live in June this year. G-Cloud 10 will enable new suppliers to be added to the framework, allow existing suppliers to add new services and for prices to be changed.

The Crown Commercial Service ("CCS") has confirmed that it is accepting new bids from suppliers...