UK-based global industrial technology group Rolls-Royce recently announced that it had achieved two breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) ethics.

These breakthroughs will be fully published later this year on the Rolls-Royce website under a Creative Commons licence. The group believes that these advances would assist in developing public trust in AI technology and thereby promote the development of the next industrialisation generation, or ‘Industry 5.0’ (not the already coming into use ‘Industry 4.0’).

The first of these breakthroughs is an ethical framework for the real-world industrial application of AI. “This is the first time AI ethics for industrial contexts has moved beyond theory and into practical applications,” stated Rolls-Royce. This framework can be used by any entity to make certain that its decisions regarding the employment of AI, for both critical and noncritical applications, are ethical.

The second breakthrough is embedded within the first breakthrough. This second advance is a five-layer step-by-step process for making certain that the outcomes produced by AI algorithms are trustworthy. This is the first such process to be developed. This evaluation system examines the outputs produced by the algorithms, and not the algorithms themselves because they are always changing. “The checking system prevents biases from developing in algorithms undetected and with results being constantly monitored, it ensures they are trustworthy,” explained the group.

Both breakthroughs have been subject to peer review by experts in the field (working for a number of large technology groups) and by experts in the academic, automotive, government and pharmaceuticals sectors. Rolls-Royce itself has been applying advanced analytics for more than 30 years. It has been using AI in its real-time engine health monitoring service, which was launched in 1999. The group’s development work in AI is headed by its data innovation entity, R2Data Labs.

“By publishing our findings, we want to move the AI ethics conversation forwards from discussing concepts and guidelines, to accelerating the process of applying it ethically,” affirmed Rolls-Royce CEO Warren East in his keynote address to the recent London Tech Week AI Summit. “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.”

“Rolls-Royce’s AI capabilities are embedded deeply into other companies’ products and services and so aren’t widely known,” pointed out R2Data Labs global director Caroline Gorski. “Rolls-Royce’s AI doesn’t often feature in a consumer’s understanding of how the digital world is changing their [sic] 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.”

Both breakthroughs were the consequence of an assurance challenge within the group. This stemmed from a proposal to use robots to inspect critical components. “During the peer review process, it became apparent that both the ethical framework around the decision-making, as well as the trustworthiness process, were new and had the potential to be applied across all uses of artificial intelligence,” explained Rolls-Royce.

“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,” assured East. “There is much more still to do,” stressed Gorski. “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.”

Last year, Rolls-Royce spent £1.46-billion on research and development. The group supports 29 university technology centres around the world.