Major Corporations Seek to Resolve AI Adoption Barriers

Data transparency issues cause headaches for data scientists and breed distrust in AI systems.

Now over 25 leading corporations including Nike, IBM, UPS, Mastercard, and Walmart are tackling this problem head-on. They jointly developed new standards under a nonprofit called the Data & Trust Alliance to properly document critical details about AI training data, like origin and collection methods.

The goal is to accelerate responsible AI development by enhancing trust. Proper data governance and transparency is seen as essential for organizations to productively leverage AI, but many currently struggle with this.

Specifically, they focus on clearly labeling things like data sources, annotation procedures, intended uses, and restrictions. This can reduce the heavy data wrangling workload for data scientists before model development.

It also helps data vendors and partners clarify what they are providing. The standards allow companies buying datasets to better evaluate suitability and compliance for their use cases.

The Alliance believes widespread adoption of the standards across industries could help significantly move the needle on AI adoption. Data issues are commonly cited by executives as barriers to getting started with AI tools or scaling current implementations.

By tackling these challenges head on collectively, companies hope to accelerate innovation. The standards are currently being tested by Alliance members in areas like supply chain, healthcare, and compliance.

Sources:

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/business/ai-data-standards.html

[2]https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/10/24/11-challenges-of-adopting-ai-in-business-and-how-to-address-them-head-on/?sh=266cd08e4bfe