Scotland’s AI Strategy was created to provide a blueprint to turn the country into an AI powerhouse, maximising the social and economic benefits of the technology.

Among the strategy’s goals are influencing global AI standards and regulations, as well as promoting access to AI learning opportunities. The strategy embeds ethics at its core, ensuring the use of AI is transparent, accountable, and explainable.

To accomplish this, it calls for the cultivation of Scotland’s AI ecosystem, building cooperation between key players across business, government, and academia.

Launched one year ago on March 22nd, a report on the fulfilment of the strategy’s first-year goals will be presented at the Scottish AI Summit on March 30th at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh.

Furthermore, the event will see the launch of a practical development guide, the Scottish AI Playbook. This will provide advice on how businesses and other organisations can implement AI projects.

The report and the playbook will be presented on the day by Chief Data Officer at the Scottish Government Albert King. DIGIT spoke to him to learn more about what the Scottish AI Strategy has accomplished in its first year, and where it will go in future.

Cooperation

Scotland’s AI Strategy set itself multiple goals across three tracks – building cooperation, setting foundations for success, and establishing Scotland as a global AI role model.

The 100-day goals were completed on schedule, setting the groundwork to fulfil the strategy’s plans. These included creating the AI Alliance, a body to guide the implementation of the strategy, and preparing the AI Playbook.

The next move is to ensure the strategy’s goals for the first year and beyond are met.

“There’s a whole set of things in that first year we can look back on – setting a good pace, laying the foundations, and making a lot of good progress,” King says.

In particular, building the AI Alliance was a major milestone as it provides the core structure to build collective engagement around adopting AI and addressing the issues it raises.

“And in that spirit, the AI Alliance is about that collective approach to solving these challenging questions.” King says.

“A great example of that is how we’re working with our colleagues in CivTech to bring thinking from industry and public service together around those issues.”

Ethics and Trust

One of the key challenges to fulfilling Scotland’s AI ambitions is trust. While AI has found itself into most people’s everyday lives, such as through virtual assistants, there is arguably still scepticism about how AI is used.

“We’re in a reasonable place in Scotland,” King notes. “The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey shows that we enjoy relatively high levels of public trust in how we use data in Scotland – that’s a good foundation on which to build.

“My ambition is to do more to invest in building trust and confidence.”

Transparency is one of the key values that can build public trust, ensuring people understand how algorithms are used and to what end.

“People can get that context and use it to enrich their understanding of how AI is actually being used in the public service in a way that’s meaningful and contextualised,” King says.

“But it requires continued investment.”

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With cooperation between multiple partners in Scotland’s tech ecosystem being at the heart of the AI Strategy, this presents challenges for building trust. AI is being rapidly commodified and integrated into numerous products and services.

For every public and commercial endeavour that deploys and leverages AI, the risk increases that one group could use it unethically, in a way that disrespects people’s data, or uses biased algorithms. The A-level scandal is a prime example of the damage that can be done if this isn’t done well. Events like that have the power to erode public trust in the technology.

“I think promoting AI is both an opportunity but also potentially a risk if we don’t understand and have visibility of those things,” King says.

As such, ensuring buy-in across all sectors and actors and a commitment to abiding by the principles of the AI Strategy is vital to building faith in the technology.

An essential part of this work with businesses is the development on the AI Playbook. It will be a practical guide for companies and public services to help them with their adoption of AI.

“That will bring together resources that have been developed through the AI Alliance,” King says.

Scotland’s Place

For AI, ethical considerations are not optional – they are integral to building trust in the technology. Without trust, the myriad benefits the technology offers can’t be adopted.

“I’m really excited about the work we’re doing around an ethical digital nation, which I think complements the AI strategy,” King says

“I’m anticipating some interesting work coming from that over the next couple of months. That will help organisations demonstrate that they are operating in ways of delivering digital services in ways that are ethical.”

In addition, the focus on ethics is a major opportunity for Scotland’s AI Strategy. It provides a way to differentiate itself from similar strategies being developed by other countries.

“It’s an optimistic position to see Scotland positioning itself competitively to benefit our public services in our economy,” King says. “Being trustworthy, ethical, inclusive, are actually necessary conditions for comfortable adoption of AI tech and technology.”

As such, Scotland’s ambitious AI plans have also received interest from across the UK and internationally.

“We’ve had conversations with colleagues in Europe and the Nordics – that’s the space where they see us as really distinctive and they recognise that there’s definitely an opportunity for Scotland to show genuine leadership,” King says

“There are a number of different global blocs that are emerging around AI and the social policy conditions put around that. Not all of them recognise the importance of delivering AI in an ethical and inclusive way. That’s definitely the opportunity for Scotland to differentiate itself from those nations that can chuck vast resources at creating new AI solutions.

“There’re still opportunities for Scotland to show leadership around new algorithms. All of these things are spaces where Scotland, even as a small country, can still show leadership, and differentiate itself in the global landscape.”

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