The HSE has outlined their approach to AI, is this something as a business we all should be considering..
HSE’s role in regulating AI includes:
· regulating the use of AI where it impacts on health and safety in workplaces where HSE is the enforcing authority
· regulating the use of AI in design, manufacture and supply of workplace machinery, equipment and products for use in the workplace as a Market Surveillance Authority under the Product Safety regulatory framework.
· where AI impacts on HSE’s role to protect people and places, including building safety, chemicals and pesticides regulation.
Health and safety law
Most health and safety legislation enforced by HSE arises from the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, which sets objectives to be achieved without prescribing how to achieve them. The goal-setting nature of this legislation means it is applicable regardless of the technology being used and so includes the use of AI in the workplace.
Assess and manage risk
The central principle of health and safety law is that those who create risks are best placed to manage and control that risk in a sensible, proportionate, and pragmatic way. As benchmarks develop for the use of AI, we want to reach a point where AI risk is no longer novel and is managed in the same way as any other risk.
HSE expects a risk assessment to be undertaken for uses of AI which impact on health and safety and appropriate controls put in place to reduce risk so far as is reasonably practicable, including to address cyber security threats.
Source - hse.gov