Ensuring equity and access when integrating AI in engineering biology

Project duration: September 2024 – September 2027

A health professional in a clinical setting uses a digital tablet.

The challenge

As new technologies offer significant opportunities for advancement, it’s crucial to consider issues around equity and access arising from their application.

Both artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) promise to advance engineering biology, with exciting potential applications in fields like medicine and the life sciences. They can be used to to interpret complex data, undertake predictive modelling, and create personalised treatment plans.

But there’s a risk that these promising new technologies could be integrated in a way that excludes or discriminates against certain groups, perpetuating global health inequalities.

That’s why it’s critical that researchers investigate the equity and access issues that may emerge through the application of AI and ADM in engineering biology and beyond.

Our response

AI and ADM are increasingly being integrated in the science of data-driven molecular design and engineering biology. Our research aims to understand emerging equity and access issues, to help create an inclusive, ethical, and socially responsible technological landscape.

This project spotlights how innovative solutions in advanced engineering biology can ensure that the benefits of future technologies are widely and equitably distributed, with a focus on health and medicine.

By investigating equity and access at the integration of AI and ADM in engineering biology design, our findings will support the development of a more inclusive and sustainable field of engineering biology. They will draw attention to inherent disparities in technology development, which can impact usability and just transitions to a thriving bioeconomy.

Our findings will be globally relevant and address a critical need at the interface of emerging technologies powered by AI-driven decision making.

Impact

Our research will provide evidence-based insights into:

  1. How awareness of the potential inequitable or discriminatory impacts of AI and ADM can be built into the research and development process.
  2. How approaches to mitigate these negative outcomes can be implemented in training, research and development, technological infrastructures, and be built into regulatory and ethical frameworks.

In doing so, we aim to ensure inclusive, ethical, and socially responsible outcomes from these promising technologies, within the field of engineering biology and beyond.

Team

Prof Jackie Leach Scully (Director of the Disability Innovation Institute at The University of New South Wales), Aditi Mankad, Prof Rachel Ankeny (Chair of the Philosophy Group at Wageningen University & Research), and Lucy Carter.