Presentation of Brilliant Failures Awards AI in the public sector 2023

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On Wednesday 12 april 2023 the Awards for the most Brilliant Failure in the field of AI in the public sector were presented for the second time during the Dutch AI congress. This election is an initiative of the Dutch AI Coalition in collaboration with the Institute for Brilliant Failures.

Creating awareness for the importance of learning and experimenting with AI is the reason to pay attention to AI projects in a positive way. The possibilities with AI are enormous, but it does not happen automatically and it is important to learn from all experiences, so that we can use socially relevant applications of AI efficiently, effective and responsible manner. Two prizes have been awarded, an audience- and a jury prize. The jury prize was awarded by Paul Iske, jury chairman, and also Chief Failure Officer of the Institute of Brilliant Failures. The public award was presented by Marieke van Putten, chairman of the Public Services working group at the Dutch AI Coalition.

Jury Prize

The jury prize was won by the Foundation My Data, our health, that works on trust in research data generated and managed by citizens. Core function is connecting requests to (her)use of health data with the person to whom that data relates, simply organizing permission. But even though the data is available and citizens are happy to share it for research purposes, In practice, this is not always easy. In a project, the gap with the Medical Ethics Committee on views and concerns about ethics became apparent, methodology and health insurmountable, and the project had to be stopped. Wet- and regulations are not always in line with developments and wishes from society.

Audience Award

The audience award was won by the Provincial Data Lab North Holland, that wanted to get a grip on tourism flows in nature with the winning project- and recreational areas and learn how the province can influence them based on data and AI. However, the data turned out to be not entirely valid. For example, the recreational area of ​​the Amsterdam forest turned out to be very popular, especially in the morning and afternoon during rush hours. It therefore turned out that the A9 highway, which runs right through the Amsterdam forest, included in the counts. The conclusion was that it is important to involve people who are familiar with the situation.

The importance of a learning approach

The Institute for Brilliant Failures and the Dutch AI Coalition would like to thank all parties who submitted a case for being open and sharing their experience to learn from this approach. We congratulate the Provincial Datalab North Holland and Stichting mijn data, our health with the award of the Brilliant Failures Awards! A more detailed description of the winning cases can be found here here, these will soon also be available on the websites of the Dutch AI Coalition and the Institute of Brilliant Failures can be consulted.

Awards in 2024

The Dutch AI Coalition and the Institute for Brilliant Failures underline the importance of experimenting with AI and express that (brilliant) failure in the responsible development and application of AI is inevitable. We therefore invite all parties in the public sector to compete for the Brilliant Failures Award for 2024.