ILC ARTICLE

AI code of conduct in the pipeline

21st November 2023

A new voluntary code of conduct for the use of AI in claims will be introduced next January.

Eddie Longworth, Founder and Director of JEL Consulting, has revealed that a working group of around 100 industry professionals are developing the code and which they hope will provide a framework for the safe and ethical adoption of AI technology.

Speaking to Jonathon Valentine, ClaimsTech Lead & CTO, ThingCo, at ILC’s ClaimsTech Live 2023 event in September, Eddie said, “What we’re trying to do is bring an ethical framework to how AI might be applied in the world of claims. The group includes insurers, suppliers, tech companies, loss adjusters, legal experts, claims management companies, and ILC, so we’re getting a breadth of input that is very rare, and that’s why it’s working.”

He said that the group addressed three key issues in recent meetings: transparency – when is AI being used; accountability – ‘You can’t blame the computer. AI does not make decisions, it’s the human who input into it that make the decisions.’; and ownership of the issue.

Eddie said, “AI is about making the complex simple to the end user. It should not be used simply to speed up what we were already doing, because all that happens is we do the wrong thing even quicker than before. There is a danger that AI becomes a catch-all solution, but it needs to be very focussed and very clear.

“Where AI has huge benefits is in allowing us to reimagine how we do things rather than just speeding them up and automating them. In the future we don’t want to do the same things as we’re doing today. It can take us to a new level, but it needs reimagination rather than automation.

“We need to step forward steadily, patiently and within the right framework. Hopefully that is what the code of conduct will do.”

ClaimsTech Live took place at etc venues, 133 Houndsditch, London – backed by Headline Sponsor CoreLogic, along with Gold Sponsors Entegral, Solera Audatex and Verisk, and Silver Sponsor Synergy Cloud.