Actuaries Institute names Chris Dolman Actuary of the Year 2022
Chris Dolman
The Actuaries Institute has named Chris Dolman 2022 Actuary of the Year.
Chris is considered by his peers as the leading actuary in data ethics, sharing his knowledge widely through submissions, thought leadership, and acting as a sounding board for complex issues. His work focuses on the practical application of ethics in automation and artificial intelligence, and the social impact of data availability and automation in insurance.
Actuaries Institute President Annette King said Chris has built strong relationships beyond the actuarial community and is highly regarded by policymakers, regulators, academia and other thought leaders.
“Chris has played a significant role in thought leadership and promotion of the actuarial profession in ethics, data analytics, and discrimination,” Ms King said. “He is committed to good regulation to ensure that policy keeps pace with technology changes and meets the needs of society.”
Chris is Executive Manager, Data and Algorithmic Ethics at IAG, helping to ensure that modern decision-making algorithms and other advanced uses of data are designed and implemented in an ethical, responsible and thoughtful way. He is also a research affiliate at ANU’s Humanising Machine Intelligence group and contributes as a Fellow to the work of the not-for-profit Gradient Institute.
He is a founding member of the Institute’s Data Analytics Committee, Chair of the Institute Working Group for the collaboration with the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and a member of the General Insurance Practice Committee. He also chaired the Actuaries Institute’s Anti-Discrimination Working Group.
In his current work with the Australian Human Rights Commission, he is producing guidance material on artificial intelligence and anti-discrimination in insurance. This work will culminate in an important joint Actuaries Institute/AHRC publication which will be of wide public interest. The work will help to clarify what is discriminatory and how actuaries and insurers should act.
Commenting on his award, Chris remarked that applying his mind to data and AI “appeals to the mathematician in me, but one with a social conscience. I like to look into how AI affects the world and what social norms we want to encode in the models we build.”
“There seem to be a lot of unresolved problems in the use of data – there are conflicting ideas of fairness put forward, and what constitutes good versus poor conduct is often still vague,” he said. “We have taken the opportunity as a society to build automated systems. With human beings we do not necessarily have much control over their decisions, but with automated systems we do. We can encode what we want into these systems, giving us the opportunity to improve outcomes, if we can decide and agree on what we want.”
“We’ve had laws and regulations on discrimination for a long time, but guidance about what discrimination looks like in automated systems is still nascent.”
Chris has written numerous conference papers including winning the 2020[1] and 2021[2] ‘Melville All Actuaries Summit Prize’ for papers he co-authored, and was named among the ‘Top 100 Innovators in Data & Analytics’ in 2022 by Corinium Business of Data. Chris also won the ‘Spirit of Volunteering Award’ in 2020, acknowledging his significant contribution to the profession.
Actuaries Institute Chief Executive Elayne Grace thanked Mr Dolman for his generous contributions to the actuarial profession and Industry: “Chris has had a long-term interest in the interplay between artificial intelligence, automation and ethics in insurance. He works with complex data sets to provide insights into the intended and unintended consequences of the digital age.”
The Actuary of the Year is a prestigious award presented to a member of the Actuaries Institute who has made a notable contribution to the community and has brought credit to the profession.
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