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Debate, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
An autistic panel asked whether AI belongs on a company board
In short
At the Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Sydney in June 2024, autistic founders split over AI in the boardroom. Kyriakos Gold asked whether AI is itself a little autistic, and got a sharp answer.
Read it instead, 5 minutesThe transcript
The story
The question came from the news. In the second half of a session on autistic entrepreneurship at the Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Sydney, on 9 June 2024, a speaker told the room that an Australian company had recently appointed artificial intelligence to its board, and asked whether AI could usefully take an advisory role. The company was not named. The panel split on the answer, and in splitting it sorted the jobs a machine might do for a board from the ones it cannot.
The recording does not say which appointment the speaker had in mind, but one had been announced ten days earlier. On 30 May 2024 the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales said it had appointed Alice Ing, an AI bot running within ChatGPT, as an Advisor to the Board, and described the appointment as an Australian first. According to the institute’s media release, Alice provides real time summaries to help board members make decisions and checks that decisions align with the institute’s mission and code of ethics. The release does not describe Alice as a director, and it does not address liability.
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Sources the story draws on
- REINSW appoints Australia's first AI Board Advisor (opens in a new tab), Real Estate Institute of New South Wales
- A Director's Introduction to AI and Guide to AI Governance (opens in a new tab), Human Technology Institute, University of Technology Sydney, with the Australian Institute of Company Directors
- Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) Part 3: Demographic Effects (NISTIR 8280) (opens in a new tab), National Institute of Standards and Technology
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