Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a major part of all our lives and societies. From popular voice command applications like Siri and Alexa; to business spam filters; and connected cars like Tesla; AI is all around us. Increasingly, AI is being introduced within the public service sector with a view to improving efficiency, reducing costs, saving time and enhancing quality. Yet with ethical and privacy concerns being the opposite side of the coin, last month the UK government released draft guidelines for AI procurement within the public sector. According to document the new AI procurement guidelines "will help inform and empower buyers in the public sector, helping them to evaluate suppliers, then confidently and responsibly procure technologies for the benefit of citizens."

A collaborative group that includes Salesforce, Deloitte, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Kingdom Office of AI today introduced guidelines for government officials to procure artificial intelligence systems. The guidelines that counsel vendors to ask particular questions before selling their AI to government agencies is being called by the WEF the first for any national government worldwide. In the works for about 10 months, the guidelines made by the previously mentioned organizations were brought together by the WEF's Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its AI and ML team. The Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution hosts fellows from nations around the world to focus on major initiatives. Governments the world over are increasingly using AI to do things like predict the needs of citizens, help with health care screening, or do things in criminal justice like power predictive policing, track suspects with facial recognition, or determine if people deserve pretrial bail hearings.