Real World Data Governance: How Generative AI and LLMs Shape Data Governance

The webinar focuses on the evolving role of generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) and large language models (LLMs) in shaping data governance practices. 

Introduction and Background

The speaker discusses the increasing significance of AI, specifically generative AI and LLMs, in data governance. While numerous organizations are still adopting these technologies, they rapidly reshape data governance management. Data governance encompasses the execution and enforcement of authority over data management and usage, while generative AI and LLMs introduce new capabilities to automate, enhance, and transform these traditional processes.

Context and Historical Milestone:  

AI, incredibly generative AI, gained significant attention in late 2022 with the release of tools like ChatGPT, which revolutionized natural language processing. Although these technologies are still considered cutting-edge for data governance, their potential is immense. The presenter emphasizes how AI will significantly alter the future of data governance in terms of compliance and automation, instilling a sense of optimism about the transformative power of these technologies.

Core Definitions and Technologies

To establish a foundation, the presenter defines critical terms:

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Artificial Intelligence (AI)  encompasses systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as problem-solving, natural language processing, and learning from experience.

  

Generative AI: Generative AI  is a subset of AI focused on creating new content (e.g., text, images, or videos) based on examples it has been trained on. Unlike traditional AI, which focuses on specific tasks, generative AI can generate new material based on learned data patterns.

  

Large Language Models (LLMs): AI models trained on vast datasets to generate humanlike text responses. LLMs use deep learning techniques commonly used in ChatGPT and Google's Bard to provide responses or generate content.

Potential Uses of Generative AI and LLMs in Data Governance

The presenter identifies several ways these technologies can potentially shape data governance practices:

  

Streamlining Policy Creation: Generative AI can create dynamic data governance policies based on existing templates or frameworks, saving time and ensuring consistency across policy documents.

  

Compliance Monitoring and Automation: AI can monitor compliance with regulations by analyzing data and tracking policy adherence, enabling real-time compliance checks.

Data Quality Enhancement: AI can proactively detect anomalies in data, monitor data quality, and offer suggestions or automate the correction of data discrepancies. This potential of AI to enhance data quality can reassure the audience about the reliability of their data, instilling a sense of confidence in the data governance process.

Data Stewardship Customization: Generative AI can help customize and evolve data stewardship roles, aligning them more closely with organizational needs.

Privacy and Security Improvement: AI can enhance data privacy and security by analyzing and securing sensitive data. It can also ensure proper controls and protections are implemented according to organizational standards.

Automating Key Data Governance Tasks

AI and LLMs can automate several aspects of data governance, providing efficiency and improving accuracy in previously manual processes:

Data Classification: AI can classify vast amounts of data by applying rules based on learned patterns, automating what would otherwise be a manual task. This capability is handy for large organizations managing extensive data assets.

Documentation Generation: AI can create consistent and comprehensive documentation for data governance processes, improve metadata management, and help maintain records for auditing and compliance purposes.

Policy Enforcement and Adaptation: AI can translate written policies into actionable rules and help enforce them across data systems. It can also adapt policies as regulatory environments change, ensuring organizations remain compliant.

Data Stewardship Task Automation: AI can automate routine data stewardship tasks, supporting decision-making and consistently applying data standards. This automation can relieve data stewards from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on high-level strategic activities, reduce manual work, and increase efficiency.

Challenges and Considerations for Implementing AI in Data Governance

The presenter outlines critical issues:

Data Privacy and Security: While AI can enhance data security, it raises concerns about how sensitive data is handled, especially when integrated into LLMs. Strong encryption and anonymization techniques are necessary to protect data.

Bias and Fairness: AI models can unintentionally propagate biases in the data they are trained on. 

Ensuring fairness and minimizing bias is critical, and organizations need to audit and cleanse data before feeding it into AI systems.

Integration with Existing Systems: Integrating AI tools with existing data governance systems requires developing APIs and ensuring that AI is compatible with the organization's current infrastructure. This integration can be a slow, gradual process.

Scalability and Cost: AI implementation can be costly, especially for organizations seeking to build custom LLMs. Scalability and maintenance costs are critical in deciding whether to adopt off-the-shelf tools or invest in building proprietary models.

Strategies for Integrating AI into Data Governance Frameworks

To effectively leverage AI in data governance, organizations should develop a strategy that integrates AI tools into their existing governance frameworks. The presenter suggests:

AIEnabled Policy Management: Use AI to automate policy creation and ensure consistent application of data governance policies across the organization.

Regulatory Compliance Monitoring: AI tools can continuously monitor changing regulations and adapt organizational policies to meet new requirements.

Enhancing Data Quality with AI: AI can automate data quality management by detecting anomalies and enforcing data standards. This leads to more accurate and reliable data within the organization.

Automating Data Stewardship: AI can identify repetitive tasks, streamline them, and allocate resources more efficiently, ensuring that stewards focus on higher-level strategic activities.

RealWorld Case Studies

The webinar presents several examples of how AI is being used in practice:

Data Classification Automation: A financial services company uses AI to automatically classify and label data assets, speeding up the process and improving accuracy.

  

Regulatory Compliance: A healthcare organization uses AI tools to continuously monitor compliance with evolving international regulations, reducing the risk of non-compliance.

Data Quality Management: A health sciences organization applied AI to automate data quality checks, improving data reliability while freeing human resources for more strategic activities.

Concluding Remarks

Let's Talk About Data and AI Webinar: Global Framing Session from the Datasphere Initiative

Let's Talk About Data and AI Webinar: Global Framing Session

Key Concepts Summarized:

Responsible AI: AI development and governance should prioritize human rights and democracy and actively involve all stakeholders, ensuring inclusivity at every step of the process.

Data Governance: Proper governance is essential for AI systems to function ethically and inclusively, with a particular focus on data from diverse sources.

Global Index for Responsible AI: This tool plays a crucial role in measuring and promoting responsible AI practices globally. By focusing on human rights, sustainability, and gender equality, it instills optimism about the future of AI governance.

Challenges of Implementation: It's essential to be aware that moving beyond principles to practical application, especially in underresourced regions, is challenging. This underscores the need for collective effort in implementing responsible AI.

Inclusivity and Data Colonialism: Ensuring AI systems reflect diverse populations and do not perpetuate historical patterns of exploitation.

Introduction to Responsible AI

• The  AI framework ensures that AI technologies are developed, used, and governed in a manner that respects human rights and reinforces democratic values.
• The discussion highlights the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on various aspects of our lives, both positively (by spurring innovation and enhancing healthcare access) and negatively (by enabling mass surveillance and eroding civil liberties).
• This dual nature underscores the central challenge of responsible AI.

Data Governance and AI

The panelists discuss the crucial role of data as the foundation of AI systems and how the quality, quantity, and governance of data have a direct impact on AI outcomes. They argue that data governance frameworks need to be specifically designed for AI, with a focus on:

• Inclusive democratic principles are being integrated into data practices.
• Ethical considerations regarding data sovereignty, particularly concerning marginalized or underrepresented communities.

Global Index for Responsible AI

The core concept discussed is the Global Index for Responsible AI, which seeks to:

• Provide benchmarks to measure how well different countries perform in AI governance.
• Ensure that AI use aligns with human rights, sustainability, and gender equality.
• Track progress over time with a focus on the global South.

The Index aims to provide measurable indicators to understand how various regions are advancing responsible AI practices. The categories include human rights, responsible AI governance, national capacities, and enabling environments. This global initiative considers individual and collective rights to assess a nation's ability to implement accountable AI practices.

Challenges in AI Implementation

Another key concept is the challenge of implementation. While there are many principles for AI ethics, such as the UNESCO AI principles and OECD guidelines, implementation still needs to be discovered.

The speakers argue that:

• There must be more connection between AI principles and practical implementation in many regions, particularly developing economies.
• Implementation is complex due to data access inequalities, lack of internet connectivity, and other infrastructural barriers.
• Furthermore, bias in AI models exacerbates existing societal inequalities, especially when training data fails to represent marginalized groups.

Inclusivity in AI and Data Governance

The speakers repeatedly emphasize the importance of diversity in data sets and warn of the dangers of unrepresentative data in AI systems. They stress how data colonialism—the extraction of data from marginalized communities—can perpetuate inequalities. They strongly advocate that AI systems need to account for diverse populations to avoid perpetuating structural inequalities, making the audience feel the necessity of inclusivity in AI systems.

Inclusive and Ethical AI for Academic Libraries

The webinar focuses on how academic libraries can ethically and inclusively adopt and integrate artificial intelligence (AI). It brings together experts to share insights on the potential and challenges of AI in library services, notably how AI can support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education. The discussion also covers the broader implications of AI technologies in academic settings, including governance, accessibility, ethics, and employment impacts.

Defining Inclusive AI

Inclusive AI emphasizes developing AI systems designed to be fair, transparent, and representative of diverse groups. It is not enough for AI to be efficient; it must be created consciously to eliminate biases, especially those that reinforce historical inequities. AI systems should serve all users, including historically marginalized and underrepresented groups.

In academic libraries, inclusive AI would ensure that all students, faculty, and staff—regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status, or ability—can access and benefit from AI-driven tools and resources. Libraries are increasingly integrating AI into their systems, and these tools must reflect the values of inclusivity.

The Role of Academic Libraries in Ethical AI

Academic libraries have a unique opportunity to lead the ethical use of AI in higher education. The presenters stressed that libraries must not just adopt AI for modernization but should focus on using AI to support ethical research and education. Libraries are historically seen as places of equitable access to information, and this mission should guide their approach to AI.

However, a key challenge lies in avoiding ethical paralysis—an overemphasis on potential harm that stifles innovation. The presenters encourage libraries to actively shape AI use by applying ethical frameworks while embracing AI’s potential to expand access and services. This means that while it's essential to be mindful of the potential ethical issues, it's equally important not to let these concerns hinder the adoption and innovation of AI in libraries.

The role of libraries extends beyond mere AI adoption. 

Libraries can champion ethical AI by Developing AI Governance Structures. Creating internal committees or teams to oversee AI development and implementation ensures that moral principles are embedded in library AI systems.

Educating the Community: Libraries should inform students and faculty about AI, not only using these tools but also their limitations and the biases they may reflect.

Ethical Auditing: Libraries can lead in auditing AI systems to check for bias, discrimination, and inequities that may arise in the data these systems use or the results they generate.

Libraries as Centers for AI Education and Skill Development

Libraries are ideal institutions for promoting AI literacy. They provide a safe and secure environment for students, faculty, and staff to learn AI tools. Presenters have pointed out that many individuals still lack confidence or skills in using AI technologies, and libraries can bridge this gap by offering training programs. This is particularly important in helping individuals understand how AI systems work and their applications in academic research. However, grasping AI's ethical implications is equally crucial, as this understanding empowers us to use AI responsibly. 

Libraries can play a crucial role in educating their communities about AI by using these tools and understanding their limitations and the biases they may reflect. AI Labs and Resources: By introducing specific AI tools such as Bard for natural language processing and ChatGPT for conversational AI, libraries provide controlled environments where students can learn to use these technologies safely and responsibly, instilling confidence in their abilities.

Upskilling Library Staff

Staff training in AI literacy is essential for libraries and other organizations to ensure employees can effectively work with AI technologies and support users in navigating AI-driven systems. Training should cover several key areas:

Understanding AI Functionality: Staff should learn how AI systems operate, including machine learning, natural language processing, and data analysis techniques. This knowledge allows them to interact with AI tools confidently, making troubleshooting issues or answering user questions easier.

Ethical Considerations: AI systems often involve ethical issues such as data privacy, bias, transparency, and the impact of AI on employment. Training should emphasize these concerns, recognizing the staff's role in responsibly guiding users through these issues. By understanding these ethical challenges, staff can ensure AI technologies are used to promote fairness and inclusivity, making them an integral part of the process.

AI as a Collaborative Tool: Rather than viewing AI as a threat to their jobs, staff should be taught how AI can complement their work, automate repetitive tasks, and allow them to focus on more complex, value-added services. For instance, AI can assist in tasks like resource curation, chatbots for customer service, or data management, while human staff can focus on user engagement and decision-making. This can lead to significant cost savings and efficiency improvements for the library.

Practical Applications: Staff training should also include practical applications of AI systems, such as using AI-driven cataloging systems or chatbots and assisting users in navigating AI-enabled services like personalized recommendations or automated research assistance. This practical knowledge will make staff feel more prepared and competent.

Addressing Bias in AI Systems

One of the major concerns discussed was the inherent bias in many AI systems. Large language models and other AI technologies often draw from existing data sources, which may reflect societal biases, particularly those rooted in colonial, Eurocentric, or otherwise exclusionary perspectives. As a result, AI systems can unintentionally perpetuate the same biases in their training data.

This is where libraries can play a significant role by Ensuring Diverse Data Sources. When training AI models, the data must come from diverse, inclusive sources representing various cultures, languages, and perspectives. This commitment to inclusivity in AI training should make the audience feel integral to creating a fair and representative AI system. Critical Use of AI Outputs: Users of AI tools in academic libraries should be encouraged to critically evaluate the results generated by AI, recognizing the possibility of biased outputs.

The presenters emphasized that libraries must educate their communities on how to interpret AI outputs and make decisions about the credibility and relevance of information, especially when using generative AI in research and learning.

AI and Accessibility

The integration of AI also brings new opportunities for improving library accessibility. AI tools such as text-to-speech, automatic transcription, and machine translation can significantly enhance access for students with disabilities or language barriers. This potential of AI to break down accessibility barriers should inspire optimism about the future of library services. However, the presenters cautioned that AI systems must be designed with accessibility in mind from the outset. Many current AI models still need to be improved in understanding diverse languages and dialects, which can be a significant limitation for inclusive access.

AI Governance and Policy in Libraries

Another key topic was the need for robust governance structures within academic libraries to manage AI technologies. The presenters suggested that libraries implement AI governance frameworks that address questions like: How do we ensure AI is aligned with our DEI goals?
How do we regularly audit AI tools for bias or inequity?
What processes are in place for user feedback on AI tools?

The Impact of AI on Library Jobs

There was also discussion about the fear that AI might replace library jobs. However, it's important to note that AI can automate specific tasks, such as cataloging, answering basic reference queries, or analyzing large datasets, freeing up library staff from repetitive tasks. This can allow them to focus on more complex, human-centered services such as personalized research assistance, instructional design, and DEI initiatives. While some routine tasks may be automated, the presenters argued that AI should be seen as an enhancement to human labor, not a replacement.

AI can free library staff from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on more complex, human-centered services such as personalized research assistance, instructional design, and DEI initiatives. To mitigate the fear of job displacement, the presenters suggested libraries provide ongoing training and reskilling opportunities so staff can effectively collaborate with AI tools.