Data and AI

Is AI the future? Only if it’s responsible

Article 13 Aug 2024 Read time: 1 min

By Michael Bradshaw, Global Practice Leader, Apps, Data & AI at Kyndryl

By working together, people and artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to help advance humanity into the next era of innovation. It is not an overstatement to say that the development and refinement of AI and generative AI will deliver advantages comparable to electrification. However, as with every technology or tool people create or harness, there are risks. Fire heats and cooks but also burns. Electricity enables wonders unimagined by those who came before us but comes with dangers. Similarly, we must build safeguards into AI as we develop it. We must also establish and maintain values in our governance of AI. Governments have well understood the need to balance innovation and risk-taking.

Advancing global AI governance

With the EU AI Act having entered into force on Aug. 1, 2024, we have the opportunity to continue the global collaboration on the values and guidelines based on the foundation of the EU AI Act that will help us govern the development and refinement of AI. Other regions and nations are intensifying their efforts to incorporate proper governance into AI. Countries like Japan and the U.S. are enacting comprehensive legislation, targeted regulations and voluntary guidelines to help manage AI. Multilateral efforts from bodies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.N. and the G7 (Hiroshima Process) have been established or are underway to coordinate elements of AI requiring governance. As the world's largest provider of IT infrastructure services, Kyndryl welcomes harmonization efforts, believing they contribute to legal certainty and are essential in adequately addressing risks. Both globally and locally, this is an important moment for AI governance.

In decades of working with critical infrastructure enterprises in manufacturing, healthcare, shipping, telecommunications, energy and more, Kyndryl has helped our customers deploy and benefit from AI at scale. That takes expertise and oversight. So, we commit resources internally to uncovering the potential benefits of AI within the context of regulations, technological developments, ethics and associated legal risks.

Our “Responsible AI at Kyndryl” principles guide us in seeking the benefits of AI while helping us counteract its risks. Specifically, our robust governance framework — overseen by Kyndryl’s AI Board of senior leaders — includes an evaluation of the efficacy of using AI in certain situations; identification and consideration of the associated risks; and a technical review to help ensure that any AI deployment is fit for purpose. Kyndryl’s AI Management System brings efficiency, visibility and tracking to our AI use.

How Kyndryl is fostering AI innovation

These points illustrate how Kyndryl’s unique and highly experienced perspective puts us at the center of AI innovation. Through our strategic alliances with the world’s leading hyperscalers, and our rich ecosystem of solutions providers, Kyndryl has access to the IT industry’s premier AI innovators, developers and operators. We curate this expertise for each customer based on which deployments best meet their criteria for competitiveness and growth. And Kyndryl supports our customers through our AI-enabled systems management platform — Kyndryl Bridge — and our global network of technical experts.

Nearly half of the organizations that have embraced AI are still in the experimental stages. The challenge — both technically and ethically — lies in the “industrialization of AI” and its deployment at scale. Our research reveals that only 14% of organizations that use AI feel confident in their ability to establish and support generative AI throughout the enterprise. There is a significant skills gap when it comes to migrating workloads to the cloud, and to integrating the variety of platforms and technologies that together constitute a holistic approach to AI-infused IT operations.

But opportunity abounds. For example, the Kyndryl Foundation helps tackle the skill shortage challenge by supporting nonprofit organizations working toward building an inclusive workforce, particularly in cybersecurity. Now in its second application cycle, the Foundation is including a focus on AI skilling to leverage its respective technical knowledge. The key is having governance models that help support AI’s safe and successful deployment. Having an AI governance model built on a foundation of transparency, security and ethical values is essential to developing trust. Only with such a foundation will AI gain broad acceptance across industries and throughout the communities they serve.

We are at an inflection point in the development of AI and generative AI. The February 2025 AI Action Summit in France — building on the initial summit hosted by the UK in November 2023 and the subsequent summit in Korea, supported by the UK, in May of this year — will offer a unique moment to forge a common framework for global and inclusive AI governance.

Alongside these global efforts, Kyndryl continues to strive to use AI that emphasizes transparency, explainability and security. In doing so, we will position ourselves for the next great wave of human progress.