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An embedded ethics approach for AI development

Nature Machine Intelligence volume 2, pages 488–490 (2020)Cite this article

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There is a need to consider how AI developers can be practically assisted in identifying and addressing ethical issues. In this Comment, a group of AI engineers, ethicists and social scientists suggest embedding ethicists into the development team as one way of improving the consideration of ethical issues during AI development.

Ethical concerns around artificial intelligence (AI) technology have prompted a rush towards ‘AI ethics’ to consider how AI technology can be developed and implemented in an ethical manner1,2,3,4. A recent scoping review identified 84 documents containing ethical principles or guidelines for AI that have been issued by a wide range of public and private organizations1. In the absence of legally enforceable regulations, those developing AI technology are largely left to translate the existing high-level ethical principles as they see fit5. Furthermore, it has recently been argued that a principled approach is unlikely to be successful in AI because AI development “lacks common aims and fiduciary duties, professional history and norms, proven methods to translate principles into practice, and robust legal and professional accountability mechanisms” compared to professions like medicine5. Although it is clear that a growing number of technology developers are willing to consider the ethical challenges around AI6, most do not have the necessary competency to translate high-level ethical principles into practice. This is unsurprising as the professional backgrounds of AI developers usually do not include systematic training in ethics. Conversely, few trained ethicists or social scientists currently work in tech companies, and there is no established culture of practical exchange between these fields. This creates a gap when it comes to translating ethical considerations into ethical practices, and there is a need to develop more concrete approaches7. It is imperative that the ethical challenges of AI are addressed as early as possible during the development process to ensure the ethically, socially and legally responsible design and implementation of these applications8. While various suggestions have emerged, so far there is no cohesive approach to integrating ethics into the development of AI and capitalize on the potential of including ethics upstream in the development process. We propose that an ‘embedded ethics’ approach can fill this gap and promote a more ethical development of AI applications.

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Acknowledgements

The support by the Bavarian Institute for Digital Transformation is gratefully acknowledged. L.A.C. is funded by the National Institute of Health through NIBIB R01 EB017205.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of History and Ethics in Medicine, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Stuart McLennan, Amelia Fiske & Alena Buyx

  2. Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Leo Anthony Celi

  3. Harvard–Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Leo Anthony Celi

  4. Munich Center for Technology in Society, School of Management and School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Ruth Müller

  5. Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Jan Harder, Konstantin Ritt, Sami Haddadin & Alena Buyx

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  1. Stuart McLennan
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  8. Alena Buyx
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Contributions

S.M. and A.B. conceived the initial idea of the paper. S.M. prepared the initial draft with the assistance of A.F., in regular discussion with A.B., who provided feedback and comments. L.A.C., R.M., J.H., K.R. and S.H. reviewed the draft and critically revised it for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final version of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stuart McLennan.

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Competing interests

A.B. is a member of the German Ethics Council. S.H. is a member of the European High-Level Group on Artificial Intelligence, and is a founder of robotics company Franka Emika.

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McLennan, S., Fiske, A., Celi, L.A. et al. An embedded ethics approach for AI development. Nat Mach Intell 2, 488–490 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-0214-1

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