How AI Challenges Professional Ethics

Abstract

Having considered those aspects of professional practice which underpin the need for professional codes of conduct, and the nature of such codes, we turn now to consider how AI presents particular challenges for developing professional codes of ethics. Although many working in AI may be members of a professional body, work in AI may be carried out by those outside of any formal organisational setting. In addition, in AI, resources of money, technological capacity, and capacity over the dissemination of information, may be concentrated into certain hands. At the same time, the control problem in AI undermines the expertise gradient that in most professions gives them power and authority. This means that in AI, there is a particular problem with professional vulnerability in relation to their own products. Codes of professional ethics generally deal with two matters: the behaviour of professionals, and the impact of their products or services on clients and on the wider public. In AI, we have a third, additional, layer of complexity that must be addressed: the behaviour of machines.