Abstract
In informationally mature societies, almost all organisations record, generate, process, use, share and disseminate data. In particular, the rise of AI and autonomous systems has corresponded to an improvement in computational power and in solving complex problems. However, the resulting possibilities have been coupled with an upsurge of ethical risks. To avoid the misuse, underuse, and harmful use of data and data-based systems like AI, we should use an ethical framework appropriate to the object of its reasoning. Unfortunately, in recent years, the space for data-related ethics has not been precisely defined in organisations. As a consequence, there has been an overlapping of responsibilities and a void of clear accountabilities. Ethical issues have, therefore, been dealt with using inadequate levels of abstraction (e.g. legal, technical). Yet, if building an ethical infrastructure requires the collaboration of each body, addressing ethical issues related to data requires leaving room for the appropriate level of abstraction. This paper first aims to show how the space of data ethics is already latent in organisations. It then highlights how to redefine roles (chief data ethics officer, data ethics committee, etc.) and codes (code of data ethics) to create and maintain an environment where ethical reasoning about data, information, and AI systems may flourish.
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Notes
The Data Protection Officer (DPO) is a role established in 2018 by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union. This role is supposed to be completely independent and focussed on the protection of personal data in a company, it is, however, common practice especially outside the EU for the Chief Data Officer (CDO) to be in charge of compliance with personal data regulation. For this reason, they are considered as being on the same level in this paper.
To increase the readability of the document, acronyms will be presented on their first occurrence, while key roles will be italicised without the relevant acronym. For graphical reasons, however, the figures will show acronyms with the legend. Exceptions are acronyms commonly used in the corporate environment (SME, CEO, CISO, DPO), which will be presented in their expanded form to facilitate reading for both experts and non-experts.
c-level, also called the c-suite, is a term used to describe high-ranking executive.
In Plato’s Republic, guardians refer to a pool of people who are tasked with the responsibility of protecting the republic from both internal and external threats. They are able to understand true goodness and justice in a way that other people cannot (Republic, book V).
I thank the reviewer for the suggestion to employ a broader category and for the labelling ‘supervisory committees of vulnerable categories’ that I use in this paper.
“the malpractice of choosing, adapting, or revising (“mixing and matching”) ethical principles, guidelines, codes, frameworks or other similar standards (especially but not only in the ethics of AI), from a variety of available offers, in order to retrofit some pre-existing behaviours (choices, processes, strategies, etc.), and hence justify them a posteriori, instead of implementing or improving new behaviours by benchmarking them against public, ethical standards”. (Floridi 2019).
“the malpractice of doing increasingly less “ethical work” (such as fulfilling duties, respecting rights, honouring commitments, etc.) in a given context the lower the return of such ethical work in that context is (mistakenly) perceived to be” (Floridi 2019).
The profile of a Chief Artificial Intelligence Ethics Officer (CAIEO) is not explicitly considered in this article because the algorithmic activity may be managed by the chief data ethics officer. However, in some types of organisation whose goal is to create statistical models for AI, the chief AI ethics officer role could become relevant. Further studies are needed to define the possible interaction between chief data ethics officer and chief AI ethics officer.
for example, it is mandatory under the FH IAAIS framework.
Choice: from French chois, “action of selecting” (c. 1300); “power of choosing” (early 14c.). etymonline.com.
Decision: from Latin decisionem, “act of deciding, settlement, agreement”. etymonline.com.
I will not list the articles here, but there are numerous cases in the press where ethics committees are convened to assess a specific moral situation as a result of a public scandal.
Abbreviations
- AI:
-
Artificial intelligence
- ARC:
-
Algorithm risk committee
- BoK:
-
Body of knowledge
- CDEO:
-
Chief data ethics officer
- CDO:
-
Chief data officer
- CDOC:
-
Children’s data oversight committee
- CEO:
-
Chief executive officer
- CEtO:
-
Chief ethics officer
- CIO:
-
Chief information officer
- CISO:
-
Chief information security officer
- CoDE:
-
Code of data ethics
- CoE:
-
Code of ethics
- CSC:
-
Cyber security committee
- DCC:
-
Data control committee
- DEC:
-
Data ethics committee
- DPO:
-
Data protection officer
- DW:
-
Data workers
- EC:
-
Ethics committee
- EU:
-
European Union
- GDPR:
-
General Data Protection Regulation
- IAAIS:
-
Independent Audits of Artificial Intelligence Systems (ForHumanity)
- Infraethics:
-
Infrastructure of ethics
- LoA:
-
Level of abstraction
- SME:
-
Small- and medium-sized enterprises
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Enrico Panai: Fellow of ForHumanity (https://forhumanity.center).
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Panai, E. The latent space of data ethics. AI & Soc (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01757-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01757-3