IBM Takes Major Step in Breaking Open the Black Box of AI

IBM Takes Major Step in Breaking Open the Black Box of AI
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The software service, which automatically detects bias and explains how AI makes decisions, as the decisions are being made, runs on the IBM Cloud, and helps organizations manage AI systems from a wide variety of industry players. The fully automated software service explains decision-making and detects bias in AI models at runtime capturing potentially unfair outcomes as they occur. Importantly, it also automatically recommends data to add to the model to help mitigate any bias it has detected.

Explanations are provided in easy to understand terms, showing which factors weighted the decision in one direction vs. another, the confidence in the recommendation, and the factors behind that confidence. Also, the records of the model's accuracy, performance and fairness, and the lineage of the AI systems, are easily traced and recalled for customer service, regulatory or compliance reasons - such as GDPR compliance.

All of these capabilities are accessed through visual dashboards, giving business users an unparalleled ability to understand, explain and manage AI-led decisions, and reducing dependency on specialized AI skills. IBM is also making available new consulting services to help companies design business processes and human-AI interfaces to further minimize the impact of bias in decision making.

In addition, IBM Research is making available to the open source community the AI Fairness 360 toolkit - a library of novel algorithms, code, and tutorials that will give academics, researchers, and data scientists tools and knowledge to integrate bias detection as they build and deploy machine learning models.

"IBM led the industry in establishing Trust and Transparency principles for the development of new AI technologies," said Beth Smith, General Manager of Watson AI at IBM. "It's time to translate principles into practice. We are giving new transparency and control to the businesses who use AI and face the most potential risk from any flawed decision making.

These developments come on the back of new research by IBM's Institute for Business Value of 5,000 C-Suite executives, which reveals that while 82 percent of enterprises are considering AI deployments, 60 percent fear liability issues and 63 percent lack the in-house talent to confidently manage the technology.

The study says that CEO's perceive the greatest value in AI adoption to be in IT, information security, innovation, customer service, and risk management while AI adoption is higher and likely to accelerate faster in more digitized industries like financial services.

A recent survey by the research company IDC - Perception and Use of Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence in the Adriatic Region, shows that AI and cloud computing technologies are consistently being adopted in the SEE region as companies seek to accelerate their digital transformation. Financial and telecommunications industries are on the lead. AI implementations are expected to accelerate as 71% of the companies are planning to start using new AI solutions in the next 12 months.

IBM in South East Europe recently announced it's third annual regional conference Think South East Europe and invited participants to come in Bled, Slovenia at November 6-7, 2018 to find out more how AI and Cloud technologies are driving innovation for enterprises.