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The Quest for Actionable AI Ethics

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Artificial Intelligence Research (SACAIR 2021)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1342))

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Abstract

In the face of the fact that AI ethics guidelines currently, on the whole, seem to have no significant impact on AI practices, the quest of AI ethics to ensure trustworthy AI is in danger of becoming nothing more than a nice ideal. Serious work is to be done to ensure AI ethics guidelines are actionable. To this end, in this paper, I argue that AI ethics should be approached 1) in a multi-disciplinary manner focused on concrete research in the discipline of the ethics of AI and 2) as a dynamic system on the basis of virtue ethics in order to work towards enabling all AI actors to take responsibility for their own actions and to hold others accountable for theirs. In conclusion, the paper emphasises the importance of understanding AI ethics as playing out on a continuum of interconnected interests across academia, civil society, public policy-making and the private sector, and a novel notion of ‘AI ethics capital’ is put on the table as outcome of actionable AI ethics and essential ingredient for sustainable trustworthy AI.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See e.g. [18, 28, 35, 40, 43, 46, 51, 53, 58, 61, 72, 74, 83, 87] for discussions from various points of view of the current state of affairs of AI ethics.

  2. 2.

    For instance, 79% of tech workers would like practical guidance with considering, implementing and adhering to ethical guidelines [52].

  3. 3.

    Acknowledgment of the work of the ethics and society branch of Deepmind, the Open AI initiative, and the FAT ML association is important in this regard.

  4. 4.

    The AI system lifecycle is taken to range at least from research, design, development, deployment to use (“including maintenance, operation, trade, financing, monitoring and evaluation, validation, end-of-use, disassembly, and termination” [78]).

  5. 5.

    This definition is based on the one given in the UNESCO First Draft of the Recommendation on the Ethics of AI [78].

  6. 6.

    This is basically the problem of why consciousness occurs at all, combined with the problem of explaining subjective experience, or the ‘feeling what it is like’.

  7. 7.

    As it was made clear in the Introduction that ‘AI actor’ can here refer to either individuals such as designers or users, as well as to companies, this focus on individual human actors needs qualification. The focus in this section is indeed at the individual level, but the role of companies as AI actors in actionable AI ethics does not fall away, as the idea is that the participation in the AI ethics project of individuals employed by AI technology companies will ‘filter up’ so that companies also become involved in the AI ethics project and hold each other accountable.

  8. 8.

    Referring here to the project focused on the human condition and what it means to be human, taken up by philosophers of all traditions and nationalities from ancient times to the present.

  9. 9.

    Compare Floridi’s [34] argument that every actor who is “causally relevant for bringing about the collective consequences or impacts in question, has to be held accountable” ([43] p. 113).

  10. 10.

    See the first version of the UNESCO First Draft of the Recommendation on the Ethics of AI [78].

  11. 11.

    https://www.oecd.org/insights/humancapital-thevalueofpeople.htm.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem

  2. Centre for AI Research (CAIR), Pretoria, South Africa

    Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem

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    Aurona Gerber

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Ruttkamp-Bloem, E. (2020). The Quest for Actionable AI Ethics. In: Gerber, A. (eds) Artificial Intelligence Research. SACAIR 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1342. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66151-9_3

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