Rolls-Royce announced two breakthroughs in artificial intelligence ethics, which could help gain
society’s trust of the technology and accelerate the next generation of industrialisation, known as
industry 5.0.
The first breakthrough is an AI ethics framework, which is a method that any organisation can use to
ensure the decisions it takes to use AI in critical and non-critical applications are ethical. This is
the first time AI ethics for industrial contexts has moved beyond theory and into practical
application.
Secondly, within that framework, is the first step-by-step process for ensuring the outcomes of AI
algorithms can be trusted. This five-layer checking system focuses on the outputs of algorithms, not
the algorithms themselves, which are constantly changing. The checking system prevents biases
from developing in algorithms undetected and with results being constantly monitored, it ensures
they are trustworthy.
The ethics framework and its trust process have been peer reviewed by subject matter experts in
several big tech firms, as well as experts in the automotive, pharmaceutical, academic and
government sectors. Both will be published in full under Creative Commons licence later this year
on the Rolls-Royce.com website.
“By publishing our findings we want to move the AI ethics conversation forwards fromdiscussing concepts and guidelines, to accelerating the process of applying it ethically.“There is no practical reason why trust in AI cannot be created now. And it’s only with the acceptance and permission of our society – based on that trust – that the full benefits of AI can be realised, and it can take its place as a partner in our lives and work.
“As a business we are open to collaborative innovation and we will continue to talk to key
stakeholders, customers, counterparts and technology leaders to share our work in detail to see how
we can help each other progress for the greater growth, wealth and health of our world ” said Warren East, Chief Executive Officer for Rolls-Royce in a keynote speech at London Tech Week’s AI Summit
Rolls-Royce is one of the world’s leading industrial technology companies and we have been applying advanced analytics for more than 30 years, and using artificial intelligence to disrupt the market with our real-time engine health monitoring service since 1999.
These latest breakthroughs have been achieved as a part of their work to apply AI throughout
business, including the use of robotic inspections on critical components. The AI development work
is spearheaded by their data innovation business, R2 Data Labs.
Caroline Gorski, Global Director of R2 Data Labs, said: “Rolls-Royce’s AI capabilities are
embedded deeply into other companies products and services and so aren’t widely known. Rolls-
Royce’s AI doesn’t often feature in a consumer’s understanding of how the digital world is
changing their lives. “The current debate about the use of AI is focused on the consumer and the treatment of consumer and personal data. But we believe that what we have created – by dealing with a challenge rooted squarely in the industrial application of AI – will help not only with the application of AI in other industries but far more widely.”
Caroline Gorski, further added “There is much more still to do. We haven’t solved all of AI’s challenges but we hope that when we make this work freely available, it can help organisations large and small around the world grow using AI for good, ethical outcomes.”
The two breakthroughs were made during work around an internal assurance challenge where
robotic inspections were proposed for the inspections of critical components. During the peer
review process, it became apparent that both the ethical framework around that decision making,
as well as the trustworthiness process, were new and had the potential to be applied across all
uses of artificial intelligence.