The ethics of data

"If we took every kind of search in the UK, we might be able to look at a lot of different factors for determinants of population health. However, this is delving into a different scope for secondary uses of data—something we need to have an open dialogue about as we might discover we have different views on sharing for wider benefit (for example to reduce health inequalities)….there is a lot of potential, but it needs to be done in an ethical way."

– Indra Joshi, NHSX

Ethical issues in AI are a big concern. Nowhere has this been highlighted with such force than the dilemmas posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic has thrown up the lack of data sharing infrastructure that could have predicted and avoided the pandemic in the first place, it has also raised the geopolitical tensions between citizen empowerment and state surveillance and the race for technological dominance between the USA and China...