BBC News quotes Nick White on AI washing
min readAmazon received critical headlines this year when reports questioned the “Just Walk Out” technology installed at many of its physical grocery stores. The AI-powered system enables customers at many of its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go shops to simply pick their items, and then leave.
The AI uses lots of sensors to work out what you have chosen. You then get automatically billed. However, rather than solely using AI, Just Walk Out needed around 1,000 workers in India to manually check almost three quarters of the transactions.
This raises the question of whether companies are making over-inflated claims about their use of AI. It is a phenomenon that has been dubbed “AI washing”.
Earlier this year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it was charging two investment advisory firms with making false and misleading statements about the extent of their use of AI.
Nick White, Partner, provides comment for BBC News:
The firm stance taken by the SEC demonstrates a lack of leeway when it comes to AI washing, indicating that, at least in the US, we can expect more fines and sanctions down the line for those who violate the regulations.
Read the full piece in BBC News here.
