Public Funding for Holistic Ai Limited

Algorithm adoption is rapidly expanding across business and society. The number of AI companies in the UK has grown by 600% over the last ten years to \>1,300 companies, and AI adoption within businesses is predicted to reach 1.3m by 2040 (UK Gov). But as AI grows, so do concerns around potential consequences of mass adoption. Legislation is accelerating globally: The UK has announced its National AI Strategy including the 'assurance ecosystem roadmap'; while the far-reaching EU-AI-Act and multiple US interventions (e.g. New York City AI-HR 'bias audits') are emerging and already dramatically changing the landscape. This regulation is sorely needed. Soon billions of algorithms will make decisions with minimal human intervention; from autonomous vehicles and finance, to medical treatment, employment, and legal decisions. Without protection against bias, errors, and other potentially damaging and costly issues, companies face major losses and potential fines. Following our Phase 1 Accelerating Trustworthy AI project, Holistic AI (HAI) and the wider consortium is ideally positioned to respond to this major and still growing industry need for assessment of companies' AI position and insurance against potential losses. We sit at the intersection between AI assurance and insurance services, a crucial balance for solving of this issue, and our team is uniquely experienced in both sides of the equation. We currently work with enterprise companies like Unilever, evaluating their multiple AI projects for bias and failure, ready for multinational application in the emerging regulatory landscape. We now seek to create a full-service Risk Management Platform, building on our work during Phase 1, to deliver on insurance industry requirements. The platform will enable insurers to rapidly evaluate and quantify potential risk within and from AI and data applications to provide customers with reliable, accurate, insurance quotes. We will leverage our existing assessment capabilities, alongside vital datasets gathered during development to-date and industry partner data, case-studies and knowledge to build a pricing and assessment structure fundamental to enable the appropriate insurance of algorithms and their deployment. This project will therefore create a unique and novel offering providing the first future-proof tools suitable for insurer-based AI assessment, answering a major industry demand and a commercial necessity for the maturity of trusted AI deployment. It creates a significant global market innovation centralised in the UK, answering both national priorities around AI growth and responsible deployment, and growing global concerns around ethical AI usage.

Holistic AI (HAI) will lead a consortium in the development of the first-to-market AI Risk Management Platform for insurance. The Platform has been co-conceived with our insurer and AI technology partners to enable insurers to evaluate AI risk and to price insurance; and to allow AI companies to manage and mitigate AI development and deployment risks via risk management tools and by accessing effective insurance. The consortium will help shape the rapidly emerging policy and regulatory landscape for trusted and responsible AI/ML. The consortium brings together HAI's deep expertise in AI, data and software development and risk assurance knowhow; academic and policy expertise at UCL; and end user stakeholders including insurance providers. The need for the HAI platform is driven by the rapid adoption of AI and ML across society. It is already widely used in sectors spanning finance and banking, automotive (autonomous vehicles), medicine and healthcare (robotic surgery, clinical trials, automated image diagnosis, etc.), and is increasingly being used in HR and legal decisions. With this growth and with increasingly complex use cases, there is increasing concern about the risks associated with AI, with legislation and regulations emerging rapidly across the globe, which are dramatically changing the landscape, and reflect (and place) risks upon companies utilising AI which they must protect against. HAI will lead a consortium to meet global needs of insuring against AI, ML and algorithmic issues. These can be catastrophic - evidenced by KnIght Capital's $450m bankruptcy due to algorithmic trading system issues. Key challenges for the consortium are to define which risks should be prioritised and measured, and to create the tools to enable this. HAI already provides a sophisticated suite of systems for AI audit and assurance, which break down algorithmic processes across multiple verticals, while considering use cases and user/operator risk and oversight. HAI currently works with enterprise companies like Unilever, evaluating their multiple AI projects for bias and failure, ready for multinational application in the emerging regulatory landscape. The new Risk Management Platform will focus on specific insurance Industry requirements, evaluating and quantifying potential risk within/from AI, ML and algorithmic applications. Leveraging our existing assessment capabilities with wider requirements it creates a pricing and assessment structure enabling the insurance of algorithms. This creates a distinct offering providing the first tools suitable for Insurer AI assessment, positioning the UK at the centre of a multi-billion dollar market

Until recently, the use of AI in business has been generally unregulated. However, this is rapidly changing. AI's increasing prevalence and wider consumer and legislator recognition of its role in society is driving forward a swathe of legislation across the globe. The UK has recently announced its National AI Strategy which includes the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation AI 'assurance ecosystem roadmap' and the FCA, ICO, OFCOM and CMA are all producing regulatory guidance. Internationally, EU AI Acts and multiple US interventions are confirmed as emerging over the next year. Most notably, New York City now requires 'bias audits' of all AI-HR technologies. Holistic AI ensures that enterprises can adopt AI with confidence and assurance guaranteeing AI that is safe, ethical, and legal. This is achieved by intensively assessing data, models, and processes, at any level of maturity or scale. We will create an SME-focussed evaluation tool to enable them to access our Enterprise-grade AI assurance system. 432,000 UK companies have adopted at least one AI technology (DCMS: AI activity in UK businesses-2022) and these SMEs must adapt to the fundamental restructuring of our data economy, now and for the longer-term. We will enable them to adopt AI with confidence, minimising risk, and prepare for demonstrating compliance with, for example, the wide-ranging implications of the EU AI Act. This is a significant challenge as it requires creating a far more streamlined version of the current platform with far less computationally expensive assessments, more in line with potentially simpler use-cases and ecosystems. Our current deployments with enterprise organisations spans systems from Windows Hello through recruitment to intensive research platforms, with analysis conducted over multiple stages spanning Risk Mapping, Risk Mitigation, Assurance Reporting and Bespoke Advisory.