Artificial intelligence has created a number of opportunities for organizations in all industries. Unfortunately, managing sophisticated AI applications has proven to be more challenging than previously expected. Bots are becoming more autonomous, which means they require greater oversight from both organizations and auditors. The key to governing these algorithms may be deeply hidden in the same code that authenticates cryptocurrency transactions.
Blockchain has been proven to have many applications beyond bitcoin, including managing intellectual property, developing smart contracts and preventing piracy in the music industry. However, its new applications in AI administration and auditing are more surprising. AI developers must be aware of the benefits that blockchain provides for managing bots.
What are some of the challenges with bot management?
Before any organization can develop a strategy to oversee their AI algorithms, they must be aware of the challenges they present. This is particularly true when bots need to aggregate data from third-party information sources. Here are some of the issues that need to be addressed.
Avoiding patterns that mimic malware
Over 40% off online traffic is driven by online bots. Contrary to popular believe, most bots are not used for malicious purposes. There are plenty of legitimate reasons they are used to collect data from various sources, including competitive research and personalization of web content.
However, even benign AI algorithms can trigger false positives with malware detection software. They must be carefully programmed, so other web properties recognize that they are harmless.
Avoid aggravating data that violates the GDPR
The GDPR is the newest regulatory framework governing data privacy in the European Union. It is a complex overhaul of the EU Data Privacy Directive of 1995.
Every AI programmer must understand the new privacy and data consent directives provided by the GPDR. The two most important factors to take into consideration are:
- EU citizens must provide explicit permission before any organization can attempt to collect their data. This raises complicated concerns about the use of automated data collection bots, which may unwittingly aggregate personally identifiable information without customer consent.
- Organizations must maintain an accurate inventory of the data they store. This raises complicated concerns about the use of automated data collection bots, which may unwittingly aggregate personally identifiable information without customer consent. They may be unable to respond to customer data deletion requests, because they don’t realize they have unwittingly collected personally identifiable data. This could cause brands to unintentionally violate the GDPR.
Bots must be carefully programmed to avoid collecting personally identifiable data on any European Union consumers. If they do attempt to aggregate such information, their developers must make sure they have controls in place to prevent it.
carefully monitoring outputs
Every organization needs to recognize the liability bots can have on their brand image if they are not well controlled. They must make sure that parts a program to deliver outputs that are not libelous, offensive, inaccurate or otherwise detrimental to their image.
Blockchain can play an important role in bot management
As bots are playing a more important role in digital operations, AI developers are discovering that blockchain could be a powerful solution. Rob May, the CEO of Botchain, a blockchain based bot management platform, states that new methodologies were needed to handle bots as they became more sophisticated and autonomous.
“We are moving away from rule-based software into software that runs as probabilistic models. this is the essence of AI. So, the problem there is that you can’t always predict anymore what your software might do,” May said.
Blockchain offers are a number of features that help with bot management:
- Identifying and authenticating bots in various registries
- Logging bot activities for compliance and monitoring
- Sharing bot data to accelerate development of new generations of bots
Blockchain could prove to be the most valuable bot management solution available.