Four winning projects to support AI firms working in higher
education, healthcare, finance, and recruitment
Winners will now receive up to £130,000 to develop their
solutions
Competition further boosts push for safe, responsible AI
development
New solutions to address bias and discrimination in AI systems in
higher education, healthcare, finance, and recruitment will be
developed by four organisations awarded funding under the
Government’s AI Fairness Innovation Challenge.
The Challenge, managed by the Department for Science, Innovation
and Technology (DSIT) and delivered by Innovate UK, was set up to
fund new ways to address statistical, human and structural bias
and discrimination in AI systems. DSIT will now invest more than
£465,000 across four winning bids, announced today (6
February):
Higher Education: The Open University will look
at ways to improve the fairness of AI systems in higher
education.
Finance: The Alan Turing Institute will create a
fairness toolkit for SMEs and developers to self-assess and
monitor fairness in Large Language Models (LLMs) used in the
financial sector.
Healthcare: King’s College London will design a
solution to address bias and discrimination in healthcare. The
project will mitigate bias in early warning systems used to
predict cardiac arrest in hospital wards, based on the CogStack
Foresight model.
Recruitment: Coefficient Systems Ltd.'s solution
will focus on reducing bias in automated CV screening algorithms
that are often used in the recruitment sector.
Technology Secretary said:
“Our AI White Paper is fostering greater public trust in the
development of AI, while encourage a growing number of people and
organisations to tap into its potential.
“The winners of the Fairness Innovation Challenge will now
develop state-of-the-art solutions, putting the UK at the
forefront of leading the development of AI for public good."
The winners were selected by expert assessors chosen by DSIT and
Innovate UK. The rigorous evaluation process considered the
potential impact, innovation, and alignment with the proposed AI
regulatory principles, including fairness, set out in the UK
White Paper, A pro-innovation
approach to AI regulation.
DSIT looks forward to the continued progress and impact of these
new solutions in helping to shape a fair AI landscape for the
future. The projects will start by 1 May and winners will be
supported by DSIT and regulators, the EHRC and the ICO, to ensure
their solutions marry up with data protection and equality
legislation.
For more information visit the Fairness Innovation
Challenge website.
