Simon Earl

Simon Earl

Australia

Simon holds degrees in geoscience, economics and philosophy from The University of Edinburgh. He has worked as an Account, economist, financial modeler and analytics professional across Insurance, Banking and Government in the UK and Australia, where he is at home leading technical teams, developing data intensive business solutions and running data intensive programs of work.

Qualified in project and change manager Simon enjoys finding solutions to some of the challenges we face when interacting with technology and other people. He brings a keen ethical approach to technology development.

1. Which of our Initiatives do you resonate the most with?

Encouraging developer accountability is high on my list of objectives. It is my belief that AI is a fantastic tool, however it amplifies and reflects our views and decisions, whether they are good poor or indifferent. By ensuring AI developers are aware of these challenges and are mindful of some of the adverse impacts AI can have on people, is vital in my mind. At risk groups, such as children, the elderly or those who are cognitively impaired can be disproportionately affected by poor AI development decisions, I would like this to be a topic of discussion when establishing appropriate regulation and guardrails for AI.

2. What Mindful AI means to you?

Mindful AI means reflecting on ourselves so we having an awareness of AI, what it is capable of and what it is not capable of. It means being watchful of it’s applications, making sure it does not unduly distorting our opinions, ensuring it does not further power and wealth imbalances, and making sure that it works to minimise existing societal issues. It means actively understanding the positively influenced it can have during its advancement, and pushing for these positive benefits to be chosen.

3. Why do you think The Mindful AI movement is important?

We have moved into a digital world, increasingly spending our time on computer, stepping away from the non digital ecosystems we inhabit. We have done this, willingly or unwittingly in favour of a human created or hybrid information ecosystems. This fundamentally changes the time we have to pay attention to what good for us and what is important for our health. Mindfulness in AI to me means being more aware of hybrid digital ecology, and more aware of how the digital world impacts us.

4. What final message would you like to share?

Some AI’s have already surpassed the knowledge recall capabilities of individual humans and areperceived as close on human reasoning, however, AI’s are not human, they have no feelings, they cannot empathise. Our current state AI systems are utilitarian, goal seeking statistical models.  preferred options ahead of what is right for us, we need to understand the impacts this can have on society either positive or negative.