Artificial intelligence ethics guidelines for developers and users: clarifying their content and normative implications

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is clearly illustrate this convergence and the prescriptive recommendations that such documents entail. There is a significant amount of research into the ethical consequences of artificial intelligence (AI). This is reflected by many outputs across academia, policy and the media. Many of these outputs aim to provide guidance to particular stakeholder groups. It has recently been shown that there is a large degree of convergence in terms of the principles upon which these guidance documents are based. Despite this convergence, it is not always clear how these principles are to be translated into practice. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors move beyond the high-level ethical principles that are common across the AI ethics guidance literature and provide a description of the normative content that is covered by these principles. The outcome is a comprehensive compilation of normative requirements arising from existing guidance documents. This is not only required for a deeper theoretical understanding of AI ethics discussions but also for the creation of practical and implementable guidance for developers and users of AI. Findings In this paper, the authors therefore provide a detailed explanation of the normative implications of existing AI ethics guidelines but directed towards developers and organisational users of AI. The authors believe that the paper provides the most comprehensive account of ethical requirements in AI currently available, which is of interest not only to the research and policy communities engaged in the topic but also to the user communities that require guidance when developing or deploying AI systems. Originality/value The authors believe that they have managed to compile the most comprehensive document collecting existing guidance which can guide practical action but will hopefully also support the consolidation of the guidelines landscape. The authors’ findings should also be of academic interest and inspire philosophical research on the consistency and justification of the various normative statements that can be found in the literature.

Addressing Ethical Issues in AI

“…Jobin et al (2019) have identified 84 sets of AI ethics guidelines. In a related study an additional nine sets of guidelines were found (Ryan and Stahl 2020). And there is no doubt that the production of guidelines continues, so that by the time these words are seen by a reader, there will be more.…”

Concepts of Ethics and Their Application to AI

“…The relationship between these concepts is not normally well defined and they can refer to different ethical positions. Elsewhere we have tried to clarify their normative implications (Ryan and Stahl 2020 ).…”

Community-in-the-loop: towards pluralistic value creation in AI, or—why AI needs business ethics

“…To the extent that there is a tendency to implement ethics in the sense of "better building" by means of technical solutions, mainly developers and data scientists are assumed responsible for ethical action. In addition to the application of appropriate technical measures, this is reflected, for example, in the development of professional ethics [48,49], the teaching of ethics to AI practitioners [87] or tools such as checklists [52,53,88] directed at developers and data scientists. But also critical contributions, which rather belong to an emerging third wave of AI ethics, sometimes tend to argue with a focus on individuals as relevant actors for ethical AI [10].…”

“…Business ethics deals with the question of the possibility of ethical behaviour in a market economy which is driven by the principle of competition [92]. Despite early contributions on AI from a business ethics perspective [93] and the fact that the impact of AI on business ethics has been recognised [94,95] and conceptualised by several authors [69,88,96,97], business ethics approaches are hardly found in the current AI ethics debate [69,98], but in no case from a contractualist perspective.…”