Public Interest AI: Procurement as Democratic Infrastructure with Emma Kallina | AI & Equality Open Studio
April 23 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Public sector AI has the potential to harm citizens, with risks increasing as its use expands. Recent work positions public procurement as a way to shape public sector AI in line with public interests, using the state’s purchasing power to influence which AI systems are procured and under what conditions.
In this presentation, I explore how this potential could be realised in practice by drawing on semi-structured interviews with UK/EU buyers, providers, and procurement experts. More specifically, I highlight six promising procurement practices that enable the public sector to shape AI in line with public interests, alongside concrete mechanisms to support their uptake. These practices as well as derived interventions provide directions for both research and practice on how public procurement can be used as a governance mechanism for better aligning AI with public interests.
There will be time for questions and discussions – a lot of ongoing research to talk about 🙂
Emma Kallina is a PostDoc Researcher at the Compliant & Accountable Systems Group, operating across the University of Cambridge and the Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security.