Ethical Charter

Ethical Innovation and AI Charter for Southport

Comment:
This Ethical AI Charter will be used as a charter for both AI and Innovation. An AI Charter has been adopted as it is common practice for these charters to be used, ensuring Southport aligns with national and international standards while tailoring principles to local regeneration.

1. Purpose

To ensure that the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and innovation in Southport supports inclusive regeneration, strengthens SMEs and VCSEs, and safeguards community values. This Charter sets out guiding principles for ethical, transparent, and responsible adoption.

2. Core Principles

  • Inclusivity & Equity
    AI and innovation must benefit all sectors — SMEs, VCSEs, citizens, and visitors — without reinforcing inequality.
    Training and tools will be accessible to diverse groups, ensuring no one is left behind.
  • Transparency & Accountability
    AI decisions and innovation practices must be explainable, with clear documentation in the Intelligent Knowledge Base (IKB).
    Governance structures will oversee use, ensuring accountability to the community.
  • Privacy & Data Protection
    Personal and business data will be safeguarded under UK GDPR standards.
    Data use must be consensual, anonymized where possible, and limited to agreed purposes.
  • Community Empowerment
    AI and innovation will amplify local voices, not replace them.
    VCSEs and SMEs will co-design campaigns, ensuring adoption reflects community priorities.
  • Sustainability & Resilience
    Adoption will support environmental sustainability (e.g., eco-tourism, energy efficiency).
    Shared intelligence will strengthen resilience against economic shocks and retail decline.
  • Human-Centred Design
    Tools must enhance human creativity, decision-making, and collaboration.
    Automation will be balanced with human judgment, especially in sensitive areas.

3. Cooperation and Shared Goals

  • Fundamental Objective
    Both similar and disparate groups — SMEs, VCSEs, educators, creatives, and citizens — will identify common goals and cooperate to achieve them.
  • Active Encouragement
    Innovation and AI adoption in Southport will actively encourage and support collaboration across sectors, fostering unity and shared purpose.
  • Shared Outcomes
    By pooling intelligence and resources, groups will co-develop campaigns, avoid duplication, and maximize collective impact.
    Cooperation will be documented in the IKB to ensure lessons are retained and scaled nationally.

4. Governance & Oversight

  • Southport Innovation Centre will act as the ethical anchor:
    • Hosting an AI & Innovation Ethics Board with representatives from SMEs, VCSEs, educators, and citizens.
    • Documenting practices in the IKB for transparency and shared learning.
    • Running pilot projects to test ethical safeguards before scaling.
  • Collaborative Governance
    Decisions on adoption will be made collectively, avoiding unilateral control.
    Regular community consultations will ensure alignment with local values.

5. Implementation Commitments

  • Training Integration
    Ethical use will be embedded in all AI and innovation training programmes.
    SMEs and VCSEs will learn not only how to use tools, but how to use them responsibly.
  • Monitoring & Evaluation
    Impact assessments will track effects on economy, community, and environment.
    Feedback loops will allow rapid adaptation when unintended consequences arise.
  • Scalable Lessons
    Southport will share its ethical practices nationally, positioning itself as a model for coastal and regional regeneration.

6. Strategic Takeaway

By adopting this Ethical Innovation and AI Charter, Southport commits to:

  • Building trust in AI and innovation as tools for regeneration.
  • Empowering SMEs and VCSEs with shared, ethical intelligence.
  • Demonstrating national leadership in responsible innovation.
  • Actively fostering cooperation and shared goals across diverse groups.

Bias & Focus Management Framework

  1. Purpose
    To provide practical safeguards against bias and undue focus in AI-assisted dialogue, ensuring that both local (Southport) and national innovation efforts remain balanced, inclusive, and strategically aligned.
  2. Core Challenges
  • Dynamic Bias: AI outputs shift with changing data sources, cultural contexts, and societal trends.
  • Cultural Differences: National priorities vary; no single framework fits all communities.
  • Focus Drift: AI tends to amplify the latest prompt, which can distort emphasis in long, complex conversations.
  • Leadership Risk: Decision makers may assume neutrality in AI outputs, overlooking hidden biases or misplaced focus.
  1. Guiding Principles
  • Transparency: Document AI reasoning and highlight potential sources of bias.
  • Inclusivity: Ensure diverse voices and contexts are represented in decision-making.
  • Anchoring: Reaffirm core objectives regularly to prevent drift.
  • Critical Engagement: Treat AI outputs as inputs for discussion, not definitive answers.
  • Adaptability: Update safeguards as bias patterns evolve.
  1. Practical Safeguards
    A. Dialogue Management
  • Use structured agendas to anchor conversations.
  • Periodically restate the main objective to re-center focus.
  • Summarize progress at intervals to prevent tangents from dominating.
    B. Bias Awareness
  • Provide training modules for SMEs, VCSEs, and leadership groups on how bias manifests in AI.
  • Encourage participants to critically evaluate outputs and compare with external references.
    C. Checkpointing
  • Introduce bias and focus checkpoints in long-running projects:
  • “Are we still aligned with our original goals?”
  • “Has a side issue become disproportionately amplified?”
    D. Multi-Perspective Validation
  • Compare AI insights with:
  • Human expertise
  • Community voices
  • External datasets
  • Triangulation reduces cultural blind spots and undue emphasis.
    E. Memory Discipline
  • Treat AI memory as provisional.
  • Document key decisions in the IKB rather than relying solely on AI recall.
  • Encourage teams to maintain independent records for governance.
  1. Cooperation and Shared Goals
  • Fundamental Objective: Both similar and disparate groups must identify common goals and cooperate to achieve them.
  • Active Encouragement: AI adoption will actively support collaboration across sectors, fostering unity and shared purpose.
  • Shared Outcomes: By pooling intelligence and resources, groups can co-develop campaigns, avoid duplication, and maximize impact.
  • IKB Role: Cooperation practices and shared goals will be documented in the IKB for continuity and national scalability.
  1. Implementation in Southport IKB
  • Embed framework into Innovation Centre governance protocols.
  • Use the IKB to record bias checkpoints, summaries, and cooperative outcomes.
  • Train SMEs and VCSEs in applying safeguards during AI-assisted projects.
  1. Implementation in National IKB
  • Adapt framework for regional and sectoral differences.
  • Provide templates for bias/focus checkpoints that can be reused nationally.
  • Share Southport’s lessons as exemplar case studies for other towns and regions.
  • Encourage national leadership groups to adopt bias awareness training as standard practice.
  1. Strategic Takeaway
    This framework ensures that AI adoption in Southport — and nationally — remains:
  • Ethical: Guarding against bias and undue focus.
  • Inclusive: Respecting cultural differences and community priorities.
  • Strategic: Anchoring conversations in long-term objectives.
  • Scalable: Providing lessons for national regeneration and innovation.