INSPECTr Project

Blogs

INSPECTr Ethics Workshops January 2021

Across January, the INSPECTr project held two ethics workshops designed to provide both ethical and technical partners the opportunity to engage in an in-depth and informal dialogue, together with the Ethics Advisory Board and external ethics experts, on two 'spotlight' issues identified through partner Trilateral's ethics governance processes as important for ethical design. The first workshop took place on 19 January 2021 and focused on the integration of publicly available data, typically online data, into the INSPECTr Platform. The project was joined by ethics expert Dr Thilo Gottschalk and discussed the importance of data minimisation and data storage limitations in this regard. Design solutions, such as the use of search filters and default settings were identified as granular ethics requirements for the Platform. The second workshop took place on 26 January 2021 and focused on artificial intelligence systems within INSPECTr. The project was joined by ethics expert Phil Booth and discussed the importance of bias mitigation and the understability of the artificial intelligence output for LEA investigators. Design solutions, such as adjustments to datasets, weightings for certainty and the importance of error identification were discussed with a view to adoption in the Platform. These workshops inform the ethics requirements for the Platform, that accompany the functional requirements. The project looks forward to hosting a third project workshop on gender in Spring 2021.