BCS SPECIALIST GROUP ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (SGAI) - Ethical and Legal Aspects of AI

The next in our series of free evening virtual seminars will be on Wednesday May 6th from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. (UK time). The topic will be Ethical and Legal Aspects of AI.

 

The speakers will be

• Prof. Bernd Stahl (University of Nottingham) on 'Artificial Intelligence for a Better Future - An Ecosystem Perspective on the Ethics of AI'
• Prof. Dr. Griet Verhenneman (Ghent University, Belgium) on 'Patch Day in Brussels: How the EU AI Act ran into the unusual scenario of reform prior to application' and
• Dr Uchenna Nnawuchi (Sheffield University) on 'The “Why” being Algorithmic Decision Making: Explainability as the Backbone of AI Governance'.

The seminar will be chaired by Dr. Carlisle George (Middlesex University).

 

The virtual seminar series is free and open to all. For further details and for the zoom link to use go to https://bcs-sgai.org/seminars/2026-05-06/.

 

Details of future SGAI events will be placed on the website at https://bcs-sgai.org as they become available. To register to be sent information about future SGAI events by email go to https://www.bcs-sgai.org/register/.

 

Max Bramer

Chair, BCS SGAI

----------------------------------------------------

Chair, British Computer Society Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence

Emeritus Professor, School of Computing, University of Portsmouth, UK
http://www.maxbramer.org

My source: BCS SGAI list

Hodges' model? Simple: it's a rich, complicated, complex picture

In wider reading (relations, maths... and) drafting a post concerned with 'universal construction' I came across:

Rasanathan, K., Montesinos, E. V., Matheson, D., Etienne, C., & Evans, T. (2011). Primary health care and the social determinants of health: essential and complementary approaches for reducing inequities in health. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (1979-), 65(8), 656–660. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23050931

Figure 2 stood out for rather obvious reasons:

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

Figure 2 'works' and not merely because it is clearly 'all political', but I would have swapped 'leadership reforms' with 'service delivery forms'. Trying to emphasize leadership at the individual level empowered to actually effect change. This could quickly change as per the situation. I also appreciate the jigsaw graphic.

You soon appreciate the complex nature of health care:

Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Quaternary care and prevention. Add social care, welfare, all the fields of medicine, surgery, nursing, education, policy, information, literacies, human rights, consent, mental capacity, mental health law, forensic psychiatry, self-care, local, national and global health, urban, rural, remote, virtual environments, ethics, developed and developing nations, ecosystems and funding.

And this just scratches the surface ...

Book: The Future of Social Care [open access]

"This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Foreword by David Brindle In the face of major global demographic change, social care policy and practice are in urgent need of radical reform and reassessment. Rising poverty, inequality and pressure on local communities internationally, are also increasing the urgent need for reform. Drawing on the crisis-ridden UK experience as a case-study, this highly original book identifies the limits of the traditional welfare state in taking forward policy for the twenty-first century. The proposals amount to a renewed approach to social care, based on the philosophy of independent living as originally developed by the international disabled people’s movement and subsequently embodied in a United Nations treaty applicable to all in need of care and support. Despite wide international sign up since adoption in 2008 there is little evidence of any nation successfully delivering. For the first time, this book offers both a blueprint for an environmentally sustainable, rights-based approach to social care and a practical route to achieving it."

INDIVIDUAL

|

INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

Beresford, P., & Slasberg, C. (2023). The Future of Social Care. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Retrieved Jul 22, 2023, from https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803923017

Book - "Criminal: How Our Prisons Are Failing Us All"

INDIVIDUAL

|

 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

LIFE CHANCES LIFE SKILLS (mental) health learning disability acquired brain injury post traumatic disorder ...	Personalised medicine: "If you use substance 'x' or this class of drugs, then there is a 'y' probability that 'z' will happen." ... ... future ...? Traumatic Brain Injury Screening
Collective Life Chances Society ...? Life Skills 'fit' for 21st C. EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION Pre-School! Pre-School!! Pre-School!!! equity Social Justice

I heard Angela Kirwin being interviewed about her book on Times Radio earlier today.

Prisons have changed. Haven't they? Prison reform 'happened'. It is a fact of history after all - Elizabeth Fry et al.? At least according to Social and Economic History GCSE in the 1970s.

Mental asylums changed. They have closed. 

Prisons have (apparently) changed markedly since the 19th - 20th century.

With the 'asylum system' of institutionalised 'care' they share a few things in common..

The 'estate' was Victorian (Winwick Hospital is long gone - leaking, cockroach infested, red carpet at the main entrance - with frequent reference to custodial care and how to change - challenge this.).

Now community care, or care in the community (take your pick) holds sway. 

We are a fifth of the way into the 21st century - can you believe it?

Decades from now will they look at the prison system now and see it as archaic as we see the 'lunatic asylums' pre-20th century (terrible for much of the 20th in fact), and yet we often forget the rationale for their original establishment?

From a mental health perspective what do the social determinants (of health) mean?

Mechanistically speaking, it seems determinism is very much doing its work - too many enter the political system and it's not the one - to represent the community in Parliament.

I've viewed Hodges' model as a resource to highlight parity of esteem at an individual level (physical AND mental health).

Increasing in relevance, I can see its utility in the pursuit of collective parity of esteem.

The most troubling commonality here: care in the community is unfinished. It sort of got started. It fledged, but never took flight.

There were many compassionate, caring, professional staff in the asylums. Exceptional role models. They saw the theory - practice gap. Pointing it out. Aptitude - Attitude. They were the heart in the Victorian shell, even as science struggled (and still does) with the ghost in the machine.

Historically speaking the ‘workhouse’ is closer than we think.

The UK rightly lauds its National Health Service, created in 1948. The Poor Law was also abolished in 1948 (Hillam and Bone, 1999).

Prisons, mental health care, preventive health, health education and community care .. so much still to do.

This sounds an interesting new book too! :-)

Hillam, Christine., and J.M. Bone. THE POOR LAW AND AFTER: workhouse hospitals and public welfare. Liverpool: Liverpool Medical History Society, 1999. ISSN 1364-999x

Book: Mind, State and Society

Social History of Psychiatry and Mental Health in Britain 1960–2010

open access

 

individual
|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

MIND	Mind, State and Society
SOCIETY	STATE

Thanks to George Ikkos:

https://twitter.com/gikkos1/status/1406329440540499972?s=20

Book: "Short Sentence" by Jessica Berens [RIP]

Telegraph Obituaries

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group - population

	Short Sentence - Three Years in Dartmoor Prison

See also:
Capital letter. Start of Sentence.

Knife crime: treat as a 'disease'.. (in Hodges' model)


Source:
Jessica Berens, inspiring writer-in-residence at Dartmoor Prison who wrote a witty and observant book about the experience – obituary, The Telegraph. 13 April 2019.
My source print copy, p.31.

UKSS 2018 – Can systemic thinking help shape health services?

Looking forward to a 20 minute presentation I have just sorted accommodation for this conference in June. I am still wondering about train or car, preferring the former if possible for the c.240 mile trip to Portsmouth. With an interest in ecology I welcome the opportunity to be involved in an event connected with Schumacher College. I have long wondered about Dartington. Now that would be an excellent way to study and learn about Hodges' model and 'holistic bandwidth'...

News of this conference I posted on 2 January 2018 but as I add the news to the sidebar - here are some details once again and the necessary links...

UKSS Conference 25th June 2018

http://www.systemsforum.org

Can systemic thinking help shape health services?

A UK Systems Society conference in association with SPMC and the Schumacher institute; supported by the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics and the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sui Sistemi

Speaker: Alex Whitfield, CEO Hampshire Hospitals NHS Trust

Provision of health service is facing major challenges in every country. Life expectancy has increased, people are active for longer, and citizens expect first class healthcare and for “repairs” to be done quickly to restore them to their full capacity. Some expectations are fantasy but others are justifiable, yet every day we hear or read about outcomes that give cause for concern. In the UK we recognise that the NHS cannot continue in its present form. But the NHS is close to the heart of our citizens making major reforms difficult because of the intense passion that any discussion generates. But the NHS as a ‘system’ is more than 3/4 of a century old. The way that illness and old age are viewed now is different to that when the health service was created. This conference will provide a platform for ideas that might contribute to a way forward.

We would be delighted to see and hear from you at this conference.

More details...

Book: The Man Who Closed the Asylums

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic --------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|

group

The Man Who Closed the Asylums:  Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care	Acute care Physical care
	Mental health policy

Another book for the reading list!

Parity of Esteem

a function of:

distance, transparency, opaqueness, answerability, accountability ...?

A related resource on this theme.

Image source: Verso.

My source:
Wise, S. (2015) Taking over the asylums, FT Weekend, Life&Arts, 15-16 August. p.8.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences on Medical Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics

NDPLS is actively searching for manuscripts for a special issue to be entitled, “Medical Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics.” Potential papers could range from the level of individual patients to that of the health care system, and could include such topics as:

• Nonlinear patterns in illness
• Treatment effects and nonlinearity
• Practice change via nonlinear intervention
• Neural networks in clinical decision-making
• Catastrophes in health care utilization
• Nonlinear advice for health care reform
• Modeling ambulatory practice
• Dynamical effects of illness upon the family
• Nonlinear dynamics within the doctor-patient relationship

Contributions may be theoretical or empirical. Theoretical papers should be firmly grounded in the extant literature and culminate in new principles involving nonlinear dynamics that can be tested; manuscripts heavy on conjecture with little reference to evidence are not encouraged. Reviews of the relevant literature on applications of nonlinear dynamics are also welcome, if they synthesize and interpret this material in novel ways. Empirical papers may include experimental observations, simulations, or analyses of real-world data. Articles will be reviewed by two or more experts in the relevant field.

The purview of the journal is critical to the inclusion of articles: Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences publishes papers that augment the fundamental ways we understand, describe, model, and predict nonlinear phenomena in psychology and the life and social sciences. One or more of the following nonlinear concepts must be an explicit part of the exposition: attractors, bifurcations, chaos, fractals, solitons, catastrophes, self-organizing processes, cellular automata, genetic algorithms and related evolutionary processes, neural networks, agent-based models.

The broad mixture of the disciplines represented here indicates that many bodies of knowledge share common principles. By juxtaposing developments in different fields within the life and social sciences, the scientific communities may obtain fresh perspectives on those common principles and their implications. Because the journal is multidisciplinary in scope, each article should make an original contribution to at least one substantive area and, to the extent possible, illuminate issues beyond that area's boundaries.

NDPLS is a refereed journal and is published quarterly by the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences. Additional information for the preparation of articles for submission can be found on the journal’s web site: www.societyforchaostheory.org/ndpls/ .

The project is planned on the following schedule (please see link above for full details):

• Abstracts are requested prior to submission in order to assist with the organization of the issue contents, and they are welcome any time before the paper submissions deadline.
• Full-text papers need to arrive by December 31, 2009.
• Manuscripts should be prepared in APA style. Key style points and small variations that are specific to the journal can be found in the Instructions for Authors on the journal web site. Reviews completed by February 28, or sooner to the extent possible. Revisions and final edits should be received by April 1, 2010.
• Publication in October, 2010.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts and papers. If you have any questions about the project, please do not hesitate to ask one of the editors below.

Sincerely,
Stephen J. Guastello, Ph.D.
Stephen.guastello at marquette.edu
Editor in Chief

David Katerndahl, M.D.
katerndahl at uthscsa.edu
Special Issue Editor

My source:COMPLEXITY-PRIMARY-CARE at JISCMAIL.AC.UK

Political shortsightedness and the power of nuclear weapons

The political expense debacle for ALL the main political parties* here in the UK and the consequences have numerously been described as 'fall-out'.

Although the lasting image is one of MPs staring into the headlights, there are many politicians who must be quietly pleased. When you listen to the leaders explain how the mess will be fixed, they appear to treat the expenses shinannighans as the problem that demands political reform. Once expenses are transparent and the public reassured then the problem is resolved and democracy will be strengthened.

As the political domain links at Hodges' model has attested for many years (and this resource merely scratches a personal political itch) politics covers rather more than 'expenses' and their governance. Long term calls for reform have included aspects of government and democracy beyond the clamour over the voting system. There is a need for global political reform and if this needs to start at a national level from the 'bottom' (literally in this case) -up then so be it. Ideally though political reform must happen in several quarters simultaneously. That is, socially, nationally and reform of the UN. This is happening and through the activism of various World Citizenry - Global Parliament initiatives that exist.

A meeting of minds is not enough: there is a need for a meeting of global consciousness. On a more mundane level - for Westminster the politicians and voters must wake up and grasp the opportunity for wider political reform.

A nuclear blast gives rise to much more than expense laden fall-out.

What about:

• Overpressure
• Electromagnetic pulse
• ....?

Just like clean-up and decommissioning in the nuclear industry, reform and cleaning up the bloat and detritus of political institutions is complex, labour intensive, time consuming, scary for some. Oh yes, and probably expensive too....

*And a shot across the bows for all the others!