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June 20, 2023

Response to the UK Consultation - AI regulation: a pro-innovation approach policy proposals

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) is the worlds largest business federation, representing the interests of more than three million enterprises of all sizes and sectors. The Chamber is a longtime advocate for strong commercial ties between the United States and the United Kingdom. Indeed, the Chamber established the U.S.-UK Business Council in 2016 to help U.S. firms navigate the challenges and opportunities from the UKs departure from the European Union. With over 40 U.S. and UK firms as active members, the U.S.-UK Business Council is the premier Washington-based advocacy organization dedicated to strengthening the commercial relationship between the U.S. and the UK.

U.S. and UK companies have together invested over $1.5 trillion in each others economies, directly creating over 2.75 million British and American jobs. We are each others strongest allies, single largest foreign investors, and the U.S. is the UKs largest trading partner.

The Chamber is also a leading business voice on digital economy policy, including on issues of data privacy, cross-border data flows, cybersecurity, digital trade, artificial intelligence, and e-commerce. In the U.S. and globally, we support sound policy frameworks that promote data protection, support economic growth, and foster innovation.

The Chamber welcomes the opportunity to provide His Majestys Government (HMG) with comments on its White Paper on implementing a pro-innovation approach to AI regulation. The Chamber commends the UK governments commitment to advancing a sound AI policy framework that supports economic growth, promotes consumer protection, and fosters innovation. We welcome further opportunities to discuss this input with colleagues from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Office for Artificial Intelligence, and other UK government agencies, including British Embassy Washington as this strategy is implemented.

Additionally, we commend the Prime Minister's plan to host the inaugural Global Summit on AI Safety in the United Kingdom this year. We believe the Summit will serve as a platform to bring together key government representatives, academics, and leading technology companies to facilitate targeted and swift international action, focused on safety, security, and the vast opportunity at the forefront of AI technology.

AI is an innovative and transformational technology. The Chamber has long advocated for AI as a positive force, capable of addressing major societal challenges and spurring economic expansion for the benefit of consumers, businesses, and society. We promote rules based and competitive trade, and alignment around emerging technologies, including through standards promoting the responsible use of AI.

Our member companies already demonstrate the many examples of how AI technologies have positively impacted various industries. For instance, AI-powered predictive maintenance systems have revolutionized manufacturing by reducing downtime, optimizing equipment performance, and improving productivity, leading to tangible economic results. AI algorithms in healthcare have enhanced diagnostics accuracy, leading to faster and more accurate treatments that improve patient outcomes and save lives.

The Chamber has encouraged policymakers in multiple jurisdictions to refrain from instituting overly prescriptive regulations or regulations that do not account for the novel qualities of AI technologies. Potential negative examples include stifling innovation, e.g., if regulations are too restrictive or prescriptive, they may impede the development and deployment of new AI technologies. This can hinder the ability of businesses to explore novel use cases, create disruptive solutions, and drive technological advancements.

Overly prescriptive regulations can also reduce flexibility. AI technologies are rapidly evolving, and regulatory frameworks need to be adaptable to keep pace with these advancements. If regulations are rigid and fail to account for the dynamic nature of AI, they can limit the ability of businesses to adapt and iterate their AI systems as new technologies and methodologies emerge. Further, overly burdensome regulations can create a competitive disadvantage for the UK. For example, if regulations are inconsistent, fragmented, or overly burdensome in the UK compared to the EU, it could create a competitive disadvantage for businesses to operate in the UK. This can lead to a diversion of AI investments and talent to more favorable regulatory environments, impacting the competitiveness of the UK.

Aligned and globally recognized regulatory frameworks can help promote competition and foster global cooperation. Additionally, regulations that fail to consider the unique qualities of AI technologies may not effectively address the risks associated with AI systems. One-size-fits-all regulations might not adequately account for the diverse range of AI applications, their varying levels of risk, or the roles of different actors in the AI lifecycle. This can result in either overregulation that stifles low-risk applications or under regulation that fails to adequately mitigate risks in high-risk areas.

Excessive regulatory requirements can also impose substantial compliance costs on businesses, especially smaller enterprises that may lack the resources to navigate complex regulatory frameworks. If compliance becomes too burdensome in the UK, it could reduce the adoption of AI technologies, particularly for UK SMEs, hindering their ability to compete in the global market and reap the potential benefits of AI.

The better alternative is to develop targeted rules that can effectively address the tradeoffs associated with various AI use-cases and the roles of different actors in the AI developmental lifecycle. These rules should be proportionate and based on risk assessment, technologically impartial, and technically feasible. These approaches not only increase safety and build trust, but also allow for necessary flexibility and innovation, given that AI is a rapidly evolving technology. Controls to reduce the risk of AI harm should focus on areas such as unintended bias mitigation, model monitoring, fairness, and transparency. As the UK proceeds with establishing an AI governance regime, we ask that you keep in the mind the following broad principles:

Develop Risk-Based Approaches to Governing AI

Governments should incorporate risk-based approaches rather than prescriptive requirements into frameworks governing the development, deployment, and use of AI. It is simply not feasible to establish a uniform set of rules that can adequately address the distinctive features of each industry utilizing AI and its effect on individuals. Indeed, we recognize that AI use cases that involve a high risk should face a higher degree of scrutiny than a use case where the risk of concrete harm to individuals is low. New regulations should be risk-based and proportionate with a focus on high risk use cases rather than on entire sectors or technologies. Additionally, any risk assessment should account for the significant social, safety, and economic benefits that may accrue when an AI application replaces a human action.

It is crucial to remember that high risk sectors like autonomous vehicles and healthcare diagnostics for example, are already subject to extensive regulation by established bodies such as the UK Department for Transport (DfT) and Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). While the integration of AI technologies within these sectors can introduce new dimensions of complexity and potential risks, it is again crucial to recognize that if AI-specific regulations are needed, they need to complement and align with already existing sector-specific regulations. As opposed to duplicating efforts or creating conflicting requirements which can increase risk.

Coordination between regulatory bodies is vital to ensuring that AI technologies are adequately governed to consider the unique challenges they present while avoiding unnecessary regulatory burdens. By leveraging the expertise and insights of established regulatory agencies like the DfT and MHRA, UK AI-specific regulations can build upon existing frameworks and address the novel aspects and risks associated with AI applications within highly regulated sectors.

Support Private and Public Investment in AI Research & Development (R&D)

Investment in R&D is essential to AI innovation. Governments should encourage and incentivize this investment by partnering with businesses at the forefront of AI, promoting flexible governance frameworks such as regulatory sandboxes, utilizing testbeds, and funding both basic R&D and that which spurs innovation in trustworthy AI. Policymakers should recognize that advancements in AI R&D happen within a global ecosystem where government, the private sector, universities, and other institutions collaborate across borders.

Abide by Internationally Recognized Standards

Industry-led, consensus-based standards are essential to digital innovation. Policymakers should support their development in recognized international standards bodies and consortia. Governments should also leverage industry-led standards, certification, and validation regimes on a voluntary basis whenever possible to facilitate the adoption of AI technologies. Global standards developed in collaboration with the business community that are voluntary, open, transparent, globally recognized, consensus-based, and technology-neutral are the best way to promote common approaches that are technically sound and aligned with policy objectives.

Embrace International Regulatory Cooperation

Regulators can advance multilateral cooperation on AI governance by strengthening mechanisms for global coordination on AI transparency. This includes promoting interoperable approaches to AI governance to enable best practices and minimize the risk of unnecessary regulatory divergences and trade restrictive practices emerging in the digital economy. Additionally, endorsing transparent, multi-stakeholder approaches to AI governance is essential, including in the development of voluntary standards, frameworks, and codes of practice that can bridge the gap between AI principles and its implementation. Multi-stakeholder initiatives have the greatest potential to identify gaps in AI outcomes and capabilities, and to mobilize AI actors to address them.

There are examples that the UK can turn to in this context. The approach being taken in the United States via the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF), as well as in Singapore and Japan, incorporate many of these characteristics. NIST and the AI RMF emphasize a risk-based approach to AI governance, recognizing the importance of proportionate regulations that account for different use cases and actors in the AI lifecycle. NIST's framework promotes safety, transparency, and accountability while fostering innovation, making it a suitable model for the UK's AI governance approach.

Singapore's Model AI Governance Framework and Japan's AI governance model offer valuable insights into effective AI governance practices. These frameworks also share common characteristics with the Chamber's proposed principles, such as stakeholder engagement, collaboration among government, industry, and academia, and the promotion of responsible and trustworthy AI. They demonstrate a commitment to balancing the benefits of AI innovation while ensuring safety and the well-being of individuals and society. The UK can draw inspiration from these models to develop a robust AI governance regime that aligns with international best practices and addresses the unique challenges posed by AI technologies.

To further enhance international regulatory cooperation, here are some measures HMG could consider in order to promote collaboration. This could be through the establishment of global frameworks that facilitate the harmonization of AI policies across borders. Governments could also consider creating platforms for information sharing and best practice exchange, enabling regulators to learn from one another's experiences and leverage collective knowledge. Additionally, joint research initiatives, for example between the U.S. and UK could foster collaboration among countries, academia, and industry to address common challenges and advance the understanding of AI's impacts. These collaborative efforts would promote consistent and effective regulation, prevent unnecessary regulatory divergences, and create a global ecosystem that encourages responsible AI development and deployment.

Accelerated Cooperation on AI

The Chamber and our members recognize that AI has the power to significantly transform societies and economies. To that end, we share a commitment to government action that unlocks the vast opportunities and addresses the potential risks arising from the rapid advancement of AI technologies. We emphasize the importance of engaging with companies, research institutions, civil society, and our allies and partners to ensure a well-rounded perspective. Our collective aim is to accelerate collaboration on AI, prioritizing the safe and responsible development of this technology.

Ethical Principles

In light of the increasing significance of ethical considerations in AI development and deployment, the Chamber believes it is imperative to address the importance of ethical principles in the context of AI governance. This should encompass essential aspects such as fairness, transparency, accountability, and the responsible use of AI. By incorporating these principles into regulatory frameworks, governments like the UK can promote public trust, minimize the potential for biases or discriminatory outcomes, and ensure that AI technologies are developed and deployed in a manner that aligns with societal values and norms. Emphasizing ethics in AI governance will help foster responsible innovation, mitigate risks, and ensure that the benefits of AI are distributed equitably across the UK population.

Non-Market Economies

Collaboration between the UK and U.S. on AI frameworks is paramount to counter the efforts of non-market economies, particularly China, to dominate the AI landscape. By aligning our approaches and sharing best practices, the UK and the U.S. can leverage each others expertise, innovation ecosystems, and regulatory frameworks to ensure a competitive and ethical AI environment. Strengthening transatlantic cooperation not only enhances the global influence of market-based economies, but also establishes a unified front in advocating for responsible AI governance that upholds democratic values, safeguards privacy and data protection, and promotes fair competition. Together, the UK and the U.S. can shape a global AI landscape that prioritizes innovation, transparency, and the well-being of individuals and societies, countering the influence of non-market economies and fostering an ecosystem that drives global AI advancement.

In conclusion, as the UK strives to be a policy leader in AI governance, it possesses a unique opportunity to inspire and encourage other nations to adopt these broad-based approaches. By championing risk-based frameworks, promoting private and public investment in AI research and development, embracing internationally recognized standards, fostering international regulatory cooperation, and accelerating collaboration on AI, the UK can set a powerful example for responsible and innovative AI governance. Through its leadership, particularly with the global AI summit in London this fall, the UK can help shape a global landscape that fosters trust, supports economic growth, and harnesses the transformative potential of AI for the betterment of societies worldwide.

Contact

Abel Torres

Executive Director, Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation

ATorres@uschamber.com

Zach Helzer

Senior Director, Europe & U.S.-UK Business Council

ZHelzer@uschamber.com

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Chamber Response to the UK Consultation on AI Regulation - uschamber.com

Otter.ai just announced Otter Chat, an AI chatbot specifically designed for work meetings. This collaborative AI intelligence acts as a help center for anyone participating in the meeting, transcribing meeting data and winnowing it down into an actual conversation. This allows it to accurately answer questions about the meeting that just transpired, in case you were busy doing important work stuff like, uh, playing the new Zelda just out of frame.

The cheekily-named OtterPilot chatbot does more than just summarize meetings. It collaborates with everyone involved to generate content based on meeting data, like blog posts and follow-up emails. Its sort of like an unpaid intern, but without the ability to go out and fetch coffee (for now.) The company says this is a major step up from platforms like ChatGPT, as they source information from public data, whereas Otter AI Chat sources information from actual team meetings. The toolset is collaborative in nature, so the chatbot communicates with every team member simultaneously or on a one-on-one basis. You can even have a related bot attend the meeting in your stead. Work/life balance, baby!

This little bot also does the standard stuff that has made Otter.ai a popular destination for remote workers. It transcribes entire meetings, summarizes contents into easily digestible formats, creates lists of actionable items and much more.

Otter says its AI systems are already used to transcribe over one million words every minute and over one billion words since launching last year. Otter AI Chat rolls out to all users in the coming days, so check your update field. The company also says no information will be stored by third parties when using the service, which is always nice.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are correct at the time of publishing.

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Otters AI chatbot pays attention during meetings so you dont have to - Engadget

Opera has launched Opera One a new version of the browser that comes packaged with an AI-powered chatbot called Aria. Just like the Bing chatbot on Microsoft Edge, Operas AI assistant lives within the browsers sidebar, where you can have it answer questions using real-time information, generate text or code, brainstorm ideas, and more.

The built-in chatbot is powered by Operas Composer AI engine and connects to OpenAIs GPT model. To use the tool, you need to sign up for an Opera account if you dont have one already. Once thats done, you can click the Aria icon on the left side of the screen to start chatting. While Opera first started testing the revamped version of the browser in May, now its available to everyone who downloads it.

After trying out the tool for myself, I noticed many similarities to Bing on Edge but also a couple of key strengths. One of the nicest parts about Aria is that you dont have to open up the sidebar to actually use it. Instead, you can open up a command line-like overlay where you can quickly type in a question or prompt. You can also highlight text directly on a webpage, which opens up a menu for Aria to translate what youve highlighted, explain it, or find related topics on the web.

Even though Aria can do almost everything that the Bing chatbot can, it still doesnt quite stack up to the Edge assistant. Aria doesnt have the same type of menu system that lets you quickly select a conversation style when asking questions and also doesnt present any one-click options that let you choose the tone, format, and length of the text you wish to generate.

You can still tweak Arias responses in these ways, but you just have to request it manually. Of course, Aria is still a new tool, and Opera will likely keep updating it as time goes on. Maybe Opera will eventually incorporate image generation capabilities as well, which is something that Microsoft has recently added to its browser.

In addition to Aria, Opera One also comes with a couple of extra upgrades. That includes new tab islands that automatically group related tabs together based on their context, along with a new design and an upgraded browser architecture. You can try out Aria and the new Opera One browser for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

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Opera launches revamped browser equipped with an AI sidekick - The Verge

Outbound AI founders, clockwise from top left: Stead Burwell, Jonathan Wiggs, Kshitij Moghe and Justin Ith. (Outbound AI Photos)

Outbound AIannounced Wednesday $16 million in fresh funding to advance the rollout of its artificial intelligence tools that help healthcare teams interact with insurance companies and automate administrative work during the claims process.

The Seattle startup, spun out of Madrona Venture Labs in 2021, aims to improve the human experience for healthcare workers. The company recently launched its GPT-powered AI agent to automate elements of the medical billing process, including updates to claim status, benefits verification, prior authorizations, and denials.

The companys tools can communicate with human representatives, take notes, generate summaries for each call and transaction, and sense when the system reaches its limitations, prompting a worker to step in and take over the interaction.

Founder and CEO Stead Burwell said the new funding and product enhancements come as the US and other countries are bracing for a dramatic increase in patient volumes. He said factors such as the greying of America, expanding middle class, and nursing shortage will contribute to the strain on healthcare workforces.

This is why we have such a sense of urgency to bring these technologies to market, Burwell told GeekWire.

The startup said its tools are four to five times faster than humans and more cost-effective. They operate continuously, scaling as needed to manage any volume, letting workers offload rote tasks to focus on other work. Outbound said the AI is HIPAA compliant and built on Microsoft Azure.

Outbound declined to reveal its exact client count, but said that it acquired 15 new customers within the past four months. The startup targets small- and medium-sized healthcare groups, such as independent physician practices and the medical billing companies that support them. It generates revenue through a consumption-based pricing model, charging users based on the monthly usage in minutes of its products.

The latest round was co-led by Madrona Venture Group and SpringRock Ventures. Other backers include Epic Ventures, Ascend, Pack Ventures, Locke Capital, Tacoma Venture Fund and KCRise Fund. Outbound raised $7 million shortly after its founding in March 2021.

There are a growing number of companies using AI to ease administrative burdens in healthcare:

Our approach brings more scalability and efficiency, Burwell said of competition. Were able to deliver more extensive information relevant to a task, which allows our ML models to make better conclusions and recommendations on behalf of staff and supervisors.

Burwell is joined by three other co-founders:Justin Ith, a former product lead at Madrona Venture Labs; Saykara veteranKshitij Moghe; and chief technology officerJonathan Wiggs, who helped build the speech models for Apples Siri while at Nuance, and most recently was vice president of engineering and architecture at tax software giant Avalara.

Outbound has about 40 employees, up from 27 in September. The company said it expects to keep hiring if it continues to hit on its milestones.

Read more from the original source:

Healthcare billing and claims automation startup Outbound AI raises ... - GeekWire

Dropbox is launching two different but related AI-powered services into its platform. The first is simple and obvious: a tool for summarizing and querying documents. This is neat and useful and the sort of feature youll see in most tools in this category over time.

The other thing Dropbox is launching is much more ambitious and interesting. Its a universal search engine that can access your files in Dropbox but also across the entire web. Its called Dash and comes from Dropboxs 2021 acquisition of a company called Command E. The idea behind Dash, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston tells me, is that your stuff isnt all files and folders anymore, and so Dropbox cant be, either. What used to be 100 files or icons on your desktop, he says, is now 100 tabs in your browser, with your Google Docs and your Airtables and Figmas and everything else. All the tools are better, but they resist useful organization. So youre just like, okay, I think someone sent that to me. Was it in an email? Was it Slack? Was it a text? Maybe it was pasted in the Zoom chat during the meeting. Dash aims to be the Google for your personal stuff app that so many others have tried and failed to pull off.

The Dash app comes in two parts. Theres a desktop app, which you can invoke from anywhere with the CMD-E keyboard shortcut, that acts as a universal search for everything on your device and in all your connected apps. (If youve ever used an app like Raycast or Alfred as a launcher, Dash will look very familiar.) Theres also a browser extension, which offers the same search but also turns your new tab page into a curated list of your stuff. One section of the Dash start page might include the docs Dropbox thinks youll need for the meeting starting in five minutes; another might pull together a bunch of similar documents youve been working on recently into what Dropbox calls a Stack. You can also create your own stacks, and as you create files and even browse the internet, Dash will suggest files and links you might add.

Tired: Folders. Wired: Stacks.

The term stacks is important, by the way. Dropbox has been a files-in-folders company since it was founded in 2007 and is making a conscious break with that paradigm as it leans into all things AI. Theres no real container that can hold a Google Doc and an Excel spreadsheet and a 10-gig 4K video, Houston says, and the old organizational systems break down even further as the platform begins to learn that all three of those things are about your house renovation project, and hey, here are some other documents about that project too!

Could you just call all that a folder? Sure! But the way Dropbox sees it, the concept of folders has so much history that its getting in the way. Folks are looking for an increased kind of flexibility, says Devin Mancuso, Dropboxs director of product design, or when it comes to tabs and apps, theyre thinking about grouping and arranging those in slightly different ways. You can have a file in multiple stacks, just to name one example, which doesnt work in a folders world. Houston and Mancuso both compare stacks instead to Spotify playlists in that theyre a mix of personally curated and algorithmically enhanced. Losing the f-word is both a practical design and a philosophical one.

When Houston gave me a demo of Dash working on his own account, his new-tab page pulled up both a bunch of information about me and The Verge (presumably tied to the calendar event that included us both) and built an automated stack of documents related to the planning offsite he and his executives were in the midst of that week. Its such a basic concept, right? he says, mousing around in his browser. Search that actually works, a collection concept for links and files and any kind of cloud content, bringing machine intelligence into the experience its more of a self-organizing Dropbox. Not everyone has to be their own librarian, filing things away.

Its more of a self-organizing Dropbox. Not everyone has to be their own librarian, filing things away.

This is, of course, not a new or unique idea. The idea of cross-platform, universal search for your personal data and documents has been around practically as long as the internet. Large language models can definitely make that search more powerful, which is why companies like Mem and Rewind and even Google have been investing in it in big ways.

Houston readily acknowledges that Dropbox isnt the first company to have this idea, but he thinks Dropbox has one big advantage over most of its competitors in this space: it already has plenty of users and companies uploading all their most important and most sensitive stuff to the platform. Integrating with the Figmas and Airtables of the world is a much easier problem, in some ways, than getting access to your existing file system. Its a very natural extension, Houston says, to be like, We started with your files, but now we support everything else. Maybe we should have been supporting everything else for a long time.

The big question, for Dropbox and everyone else working on this, is security. Here, too, Houston thinks Dropbox has a leg up. Nobody wants their stuff to be chopped up into little pieces and fed into some kind of advertising machine, he says. So the fact that Dropbox is a fundamentally private service, the fact that were subscription, the fact that our incentives are aligned, it all helps. Especially with all your data in the cloud, there are still plenty of questions about how data is accessed, who can see what, how personalized various systems should be, and much more.

As of today, Dropbox AI available to all Pro customers and a few teams, and theres a waitlist to get into the Dash beta as well. The next phase for Dropbox, Houston says, is to learn what people want and how they use the products. He says hes happy to be somewhat conservative at first in the name of not making huge mistakes you really cant have an AI hallucinating information out of your most sensitive work docs but he sees this stuff getting better fast.

In general, Dropbox has been thinking about AI integrations for a long time. Its one of a class of what you might call work-about-work companies, along with Asana, Slack, and others;theyre not the tools you use to get stuff done theyre the tools for keeping your files in order and your team in sync and your life together. For all these companies, step one was making it easier to manage everything. But that always implied a step two: teach the things to manage themselves. In the physical world, Houston says, the equivalent is to just imagine you have all these papers on your desk, and theyre neatly sorting themselves into piles. Thats great. Thats what were building.

Read more here:

Dropbox AI and Dash make it easier to find your files from all over ... - The Verge