- Four winning projects to support AI companies working in higher education, healthcare, finance and recruitment
- Winners will now receive up to £130,000 to develop their solutions
- Competition further drives efforts towards safe and responsible AI development
New solutions to tackle bias and discrimination in AI systems in higher education, healthcare, finance and recruitment will be developed by four organizations funded as part of the government’s AI Fairness Innovation Challenge.
The challenge, run by the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and organized by Innovate UK, was created to fund new ways to tackle statistical, human and structural bias and discrimination in AI systems. DSIT will now invest more than £465,000 in four winning bids, announced today (February 6):
Higher Education: The Open University will explore ways to improve the equity 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.
Health care: King’s College London will design a solution to tackle bias and discrimination in healthcare. The project will mitigate bias in early warning systems used to predict cardiac arrests in hospital wards, based on the CogStack Foresight model.
Recruitment: The solution from Coefficient Systems Ltd. will focus on reducing bias in automated resume screening algorithms that are often used in the recruiting industry.
Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan said:
Our AI White Paper promotes greater public confidence in the development of AI, while encouraging a growing number of people and organizations to harness its potential.
Winners of the Fairness Innovation Challenge will now develop cutting-edge solutions, putting the UK at the forefront of developing AI for the public good.
The winners were selected by expert assessors chosen by DSIT and Innovate UK. The rigorous assessment process considered the potential impact, innovation and alignment with 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 to help shape an equitable AI landscape for the future. Projects will begin on 1 May and winners will be supported by DSIT and regulators, the EHRC and ICO, to ensure their solutions meet data protection and equality legislation.
For more information, visit Fair Innovation Challenge website.
