It’s that time of year again. CyberFest, the North East’s biggest cybersecurity festival is upon us once more. These days I have nothing to do with running the show yet have been asked to be a judge in the schools’ debate, the first event in the month-long programme. I have always loved the debates, ever since I was involved in them through NIBE (North East Initiative on Business Ethics) and while I did give it some serious consideration, it wasn’t long before I agreed. Not only would it be fun to be part of a great event but I would get to see some old friends and colleagues as well.
The motion for this year was: ‘This House believes that AI should never make decisions that affect people’s lives without meaningful human oversight’. Admittedly there is not much cyber in the motion yet this reflects the reality of the world in which we find ourselves. AI is definitely the mot de jour.
Unfortunately one school had to pull out at short notice, which left three teams of four to compete from Emmanuel College, Gateshead College and the Royal Grammar School. The plan was slightly different from the last time I had taken part, with pairs from each team getting up in turn to argue for and then against the motion. The first pair were also given half a minute at the end for rebuttals.
Each team leaned its shoulder to the task with some interesting arguments, though at times it was hard to tell whether their arguments were for or against. The next debates, however, are based around ambiguous motions.
Emmanuel for the motion discussed how AI was quantitative rather than qualitative, with no inherent moral structure. Royal Grammar against the motion raised its opportunity cost and that human oversight would make AI more expensive. Gateshead for the motion was the only team to define what was meant by oversight, describing how AI was over confident, lacked context and that government guidelines were already being developed.
On the second pass, Emmanuel against the motion described how humans are inconsistent, can be swayed by emotions and circumstances. They also raised an interesting point that AI with human oversight is actually less reliable than AI alone. Royal Grammar for the motion talked about how AI was a black box and nobody really knew how it produces its output, that how AI was good at heading off wrong decisions (apparently) yet lacked clarity and responsibility. Finally Gateshead against the motion told us that guide rails are already in place and that as AI is created by people there must already be oversight (which I thought was a bit of an odd argument).
In the main, the standard of argument was good, though time keeping for some teams was less so. In the end though it was the young women on the teams that shone most brightly. It was obvious that they had put the effort in preparation and worked together as colleagues.
After some deliberation the judges decided that Gateshead College was the winner, much to their jubilation. I’m already looking forward to next year.