The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI

This book explores the intertwining domains of artificial intelligence (AI) and ethics—two highly divergent fields which at first seem to have nothing to do with one another. AI is a collection of computational methods for studying human knowledge, learning, and behavior, including by building agents able to know, learn, and behave. Ethics is a body of human knowledge—far from completely understood—that helps agents (humans today, but perhaps eventually robots and other AIs) decide how they and others should behave. Despite these differences, however, the rapid development in AI technology today has led to a growing number of ethical issues in a multitude of fields, ranging from disciplines as far-reaching as international human rights law to issues as intimate as personal identity and sexuality. In fact, the number and variety of topics in this volume illustrate the width, diversity of content, and at times exasperating vagueness of the boundaries of “AI Ethics” as a domain of inquiry. Within this discourse, the book points to the capacity of sociotechnical systems that utilize data-driven algorithms to classify, to make decisions, and to control complex systems. Given the wide-reaching and often intimate impact these AI systems have on daily human lives, this volume attempts to address the increasingly complicated relations between humanity and artificial intelligence. It considers not only how humanity must conduct themselves toward AI but also how AI must behave toward humanity.

Author(s):  
Jessica Morley ◽  
Anat Elhalal ◽  
Francesca Garcia ◽  
Libby Kinsey ◽  
Jakob Mökander ◽  
...  

AbstractAs the range of potential uses for Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular machine learning (ML), has increased, so has awareness of the associated ethical issues. This increased awareness has led to the realisation that existing legislation and regulation provides insufficient protection to individuals, groups, society, and the environment from AI harms. In response to this realisation, there has been a proliferation of principle-based ethics codes, guidelines and frameworks. However, it has become increasingly clear that a significant gap exists between the theory of AI ethics principles and the practical design of AI systems. In previous work, we analysed whether it is possible to close this gap between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of AI ethics through the use of tools and methods designed to help AI developers, engineers, and designers translate principles into practice. We concluded that this method of closure is currently ineffective as almost all existing translational tools and methods are either too flexible (and thus vulnerable to ethics washing) or too strict (unresponsive to context). This raised the question: if, even with technical guidance, AI ethics is challenging to embed in the process of algorithmic design, is the entire pro-ethical design endeavour rendered futile? And, if no, then how can AI ethics be made useful for AI practitioners? This is the question we seek to address here by exploring why principles and technical translational tools are still needed even if they are limited, and how these limitations can be potentially overcome by providing theoretical grounding of a concept that has been termed ‘Ethics as a Service.’


Author(s):  
AJung Moon ◽  
Shalaleh Rismani ◽  
H. F. Machiel Van der Loos

Abstract Purpose of Review To summarize the set of roboethics issues that uniquely arise due to the corporeality and physical interaction modalities afforded by robots, irrespective of the degree of artificial intelligence present in the system. Recent Findings One of the recent trends in the discussion of ethics of emerging technologies has been the treatment of roboethics issues as those of “embodied AI,” a subset of AI ethics. In contrast to AI, however, robots leverage human’s natural tendency to be influenced by our physical environment. Recent work in human-robot interaction highlights the impact a robot’s presence, capacity to touch, and move in our physical environment has on people, and helping to articulate the ethical issues particular to the design of interactive robotic systems. Summary The corporeality of interactive robots poses unique sets of ethical challenges. These issues should be considered in the design irrespective of and in addition to the ethics of artificial intelligence implemented in them.


Author(s):  
Nandini Sen

This chapter aims to create new knowledge regarding artificial intelligence (AI) ethics and relevant subjects while reviewing ethical relationship between human beings and AI/robotics and linking between the moral fabric or the ethical issues of AI as used in fictions and films. It carefully analyses how a human being will love robot and vice versa. Here, fictions and films are not just about technology but about their feelings and the nature of bonding between AIs and the human race. Ordinary human beings distrust and then start to like AIs. However, if the AI becomes a rogue as seen in many fictions and films, then the AI is taken down to avoid the destruction of the human beings. Scientists like Turing are champions of robot/AI's feelings. Fictional and movie AIs are developed to keenly watch and comprehend humans. These actions are so close to empathy they amount to consciousness and emotional quotient.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keng Siau ◽  
Weiyu Wang

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology has achieved many great things, such as facial recognition, medical diagnosis, and self-driving cars. AI promises enormous benefits for economic growth, social development, as well as human well-being and safety improvement. However, the low-level of explainability, data biases, data security, data privacy, and ethical problems of AI-based technology pose significant risks for users, developers, humanity, and societies. As AI advances, one critical issue is how to address the ethical and moral challenges associated with AI. Even though the concept of “machine ethics” was proposed around 2006, AI ethics is still in the infancy stage. AI ethics is the field related to the study of ethical issues in AI. To address AI ethics, one needs to consider the ethics of AI and how to build ethical AI. Ethics of AI studies the ethical principles, rules, guidelines, policies, and regulations that are related to AI. Ethical AI is an AI that performs and behaves ethically. One must recognize and understand the potential ethical and moral issues that may be caused by AI to formulate the necessary ethical principles, rules, guidelines, policies, and regulations for AI (i.e., Ethics of AI). With the appropriate ethics of AI, one can then build AI that exhibits ethical behavior (i.e., Ethical AI). This paper will discuss AI ethics by looking at the ethics of AI and ethical AI. What are the perceived ethical and moral issues with AI? What are the general and common ethical principles, rules, guidelines, policies, and regulations that can resolve or at least attenuate these ethical and moral issues with AI? What are some of the necessary features and characteristics of an ethical AI? How to adhere to the ethics of AI to build ethical AI?


2021 ◽  
pp. 174701612110227
Author(s):  
Christine Hine

There has been considerable debate around the ethical issues raised by data-driven technologies such as artificial intelligence. Ethical principles for the field have focused on the need to ensure that such technologies are used for good rather than harm, that they enshrine principles of social justice and fairness, that they protect privacy, respect human autonomy and are open to scrutiny. While development of such principles is well advanced, there is as yet little consensus on the mechanisms appropriate for ethical governance in this field. This paper examines the prospects for the university ethics committee to undertake effective review of research conducted on data-driven technologies in the university context. Challenges identified include: the relatively narrow focus of university-based ethical review on the human subjects research process and lack of capacity to anticipate downstream impacts; the difficulties of accommodating the complex interplay of academic and commercial interests in the field; and the need to ensure appropriate expertise from both specialists and lay voices. Overall, the challenges identified sharpen appreciation of the need to encourage a joined-up and effective system of ethical governance that fosters an ethical culture rather than replacing ethical reflection with bureaucracy.


AI & Society ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernd Carsten Stahl ◽  
Josephina Antoniou ◽  
Mark Ryan ◽  
Kevin Macnish ◽  
Tilimbe Jiya

AbstractThe ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is a widely discussed topic. There are numerous initiatives that aim to develop the principles and guidance to ensure that the development, deployment and use of AI are ethically acceptable. What is generally unclear is how organisations that make use of AI understand and address these ethical issues in practice. While there is an abundance of conceptual work on AI ethics, empirical insights are rare and often anecdotal. This paper fills the gap in our current understanding of how organisations deal with AI ethics by presenting empirical findings collected using a set of ten case studies and providing an account of the cross-case analysis. The paper reviews the discussion of ethical issues of AI as well as mitigation strategies that have been proposed in the literature. Using this background, the cross-case analysis categorises the organisational responses that were observed in practice. The discussion shows that organisations are highly aware of the AI ethics debate and keen to engage with ethical issues proactively. However, they make use of only a relatively small subsection of the mitigation strategies proposed in the literature. These insights are of importance to organisations deploying or using AI, to the academic AI ethics debate, but maybe most valuable to policymakers involved in the current debate about suitable policy developments to address the ethical issues raised by AI.


Author(s):  
Vidushi Marda

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging focus area of policy development in India. The country's regional influence, burgeoning AI industry and ambitious governmental initiatives around AI make it an important jurisdiction to consider, regardless of where the reader of this article lives. Even as existing policy processes intend to encourage the rapid development of AI for economic growth and social good, an overarching trend persists in India, and several other jurisdictions: the limitations and risks of data-driven decisions still feature as retrospective considerations for development and deployment of AI applications. This article argues that the technical limitations of AI systems should be reckoned with at the time of developing policy, and the societal and ethical concerns that arise due to such limitations should be used toinformwhat policy processes aspire to achieve. It proposes a framework for such deliberation to occur, by analysing the three main stages of bringing machine learning (the most popular subset of AI techniques) to deployment—the data, model and application stage. It is written against the backdrop of India's current AI policy landscape, and applies the proposed framework to ongoing sectoral challenges in India. With a view to influence existing policy deliberation in the country, it focuses on potential risks that arise from data-driven decisions in general, and in the Indian context in particular.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Governing artificial intelligence: ethical, legal, and technical opportunities and challenges'.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (01) ◽  
pp. 003-004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Fultz Hollis ◽  
Lina F. Soualmia ◽  
Brigitte Séroussi

Objectives: To provide an introduction to the 2019 International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook by the editors. Methods: This editorial presents an overview and introduction to the 2019 IMIA Yearbook which includes the special topic “Artificial Intelligence in Health: New Opportunities, Challenges, and Practical Implications". The special topic is discussed, the IMIA President’s statement is introduced, and changes in the Yearbook editorial team are described. Results: Artificial intelligence (AI) in Medicine arose in the 1970’s from new approaches for representing expert knowledge with computers. Since then, AI in medicine has gradually evolved toward essentially data-driven approaches with great results in image analysis. However, data integration, storage, and management still present clear challenges among which the lack of explanability of the results produced by data-driven AI methods. Conclusion: With more health data availability, and the recent developments of efficient and improved machine learning algorithms, there is a renewed interest for AI in medicine.The objective is to help health professionals improve patient care while also reduce costs. However, the other costs of AI, including ethical issues when processing personal health data by algorithms, should be included.


Author(s):  
Carole R. Fontaine

This essay explores the socially restrictive traditions that cause scriptural groups to reject the idea of universal rights and equal access to economic, social and cultural rights. This hermeneutical situation is difficult to tolerate, as our multicultural planet is seeking survival. Ethical issues and the principles of a culture’s morality are often partly religious in nature. The UNDUHR recognizes the right to believe and to promote one’s own beliefs, and it considers these particular rights as being part of a cultural “right to affiliate.” Nevertheless, international human rights law has not successfully promoted full human rights in countries of “Religions of the Book.” The essay thus suggests that appeals to the Bible grounded in human rights must be woven into contextual exegetical work, human rights discourse, and feminist critique. Even so, for women, foreigners, and “Others,” the Bible will remain a serious obstacle for enjoying full economic, social, and cultural rights.


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