People’s Panel for Artificial Intelligence

Image created with ChatGPT 4 Teams with prompt: ‘Please can you create an image with people form a diverse range of backgrounds including ethnicity and disability with a heading People’s Panel for Artificial Intelligence’

Advice and voluntary organisations that are considering adopting AI solutions might want to think about how they involve their communities in their decision-making.

The People’s Panel for Artificial Intelligence (PPfAI) is a project led by Dr Annabel Latham and Professor Keeley Crockett at Manchester Metropolitan University and funded by The Alan Turing Institute. It brings together a diverse group of citizens to learn about, discuss and share their views around the use of data and artificial intelligence in people’s everyday lives. The Panel explores both the positive and negative consequences of new research ideas, products and/or services presented to them by businesses and researchers, and they give their opinions and feedback.

The Panel is designed to give a voice to citizens in communities and empower them to have the confidence to question the use of technology.

Through a Public Engagement Grant award 2022 from the Alan Turing Institute they set up the Greater Manchester People’s Panel on AI, and a follow-on project funded by Manchester City Council Digital Strategy Team (2024) expanded the panel which Citizens Advice SORT presented Caddy to in July 2024.

Watch this video from Stuart Pearson where he talks about the Citizens Advice SORT presentation to the Greater Manchester People’s Panel on Caddy in July 2024.

Download this video clip.Video player: course_4_interview_video_clip_3.mp4

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript

STUART PEARSON

Yeah, I mean just one other thing that we did within Caddy – and something that we'll do with with some other areas we're looking at is – we were really lucky that Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester City Council, their digital strategy team, had just done a project called the People's Panel for AI, which was where Manchester Met had done some roadshows around the city to regular people asking if they're interested in being part of a People's Panel for AI.

Obviously, people self-selected. They were then put on a boot camp, a crash course on what AI is and what AI isn't. And then the People's Panel act as a critical friend to any organisation or local authority that are thinking about using AI as a potential part of their service.

And we were really lucky because we were able to present Caddy to the People's Panel and get, really, our potential clients’ input to see what they think about Citizens Advice using AI in the advice process. Were they happy the way we'd done it? Were there things we could do better? And I think again, making sure you've got as many stakeholders involved in the design of these solutions to make sure they’re as inclusive as possible when you're developing them, I think that is a key part as well.

So involving people. Openness, transparency. Ensuring that you're doing it for the right reasons. So obviously, we're looking at it through the lens of helping more people. You know, we're not looking at in terms of, you know, reductions or staff reductions. So it does make it easy for us.

The other areas we're looking at – again, focus on that kind of amplifying the kind of human skills that we have – is case note automation. It's a huge pain point in our service. So for what we call tier one advice, it might take 20 minutes maybe on the phone with a client. That could sometimes result in a 20 minute write-up. So it's taken us as much time to write about the interaction with the client as it is the actual interaction with the client, which is the most important part. So if we can automate the write-up part, that would free us up to help more people.

End transcript

Download

 

The panel raised questions and conducted consequence scanning based on the project presentation and then provided feedback. Consequence scanning is a method where people discuss openly and provide their opinions on the intended/unintended consequences, potential harms or disadvantages of the technology being created.

The panel fed back with questions and comments on:

• Who are the stakeholders?
• What are the intended consequences of using this technology?
• What are the unintended consequences of using this technology?
• What are the positive consequences of using the technology that the presenter focused on?
• What are the consequences of using this technology that the presenter wants to mitigate?

These are important questions that all organisations should consider when implementing new technologies. Engaging with the People’s Panel offers a valuable opportunity to involve citizens in their communities, helping to ensure that the adoption of AI solutions is informed, inclusive and transparent.