journal article·2022-04-20Open access

AI Ethics—A Bird’s Eye View

Maria Christoforaki, Oya Beyan

Applied Sciences· Volume 12· Issue 9

Abstract

The explosion of data-driven applications using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent years has given rise to a variety of ethical issues regarding data collection, annotation, and processing using mostly opaque algorithms, as well as the interpretation and employment of the results of the AI pipeline. The ubiquity of AI applications negatively impacts a variety of sensitive areas, ranging from discrimination against vulnerable populations to privacy invasion and the environmental cost that these algorithms entail, and puts into focus on the ever present domain of AI ethics. In this review article we present a bird’s eye view approach of the AI ethics landscape, starting from a historical point of view, examining the moral issues that were introduced by big datasets and the application of non-symbolic AI algorithms, the normative approaches (principles and guidelines) to these issues and the ensuing criticism, as well as the actualization of these principles within the proposed frameworks. Subsequently, we focus on the concept of responsibility, both as personal responsibility of the AI practitioners and sustainability, meaning the promotion of beneficence for both the society and the domain, and the role of professional certification and education in averting unethical choices. Finally, we conclude with indicating the multidisciplinary nature of AI ethics and suggesting future challenges.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education · Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Institute for Medical Informatics, University Hospital Cologne, Faculty of Medicine, University of Cologne, Kerpener Strasse 62, 50937 Cologne, Germany

Funding

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

References (100+)

Show source-provided references
1. O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Crown. [1st ed.].
2. Lacoste, A., Luccioni, A., Schmidt, V., and Dandres, T. (2019). Quantifying the Carbon Emissions of Machine Learning. arXiv.
3. European Commission (2021). Proposal for a Regulation on a European Approach for Artificial Intelligence, European Commission.
4. Russell, S.J., Norvig, P., and Davis, E. (2010). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Prentice Hall. [3rd ed.].
5. Nilsson, N.J. (2009). The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements, Cambridge University Press.
6. A Survey on Deep Learning: Algorithms, Techniques, and Applications
7. Goodfellow, I., Bengio, Y., and Courville, A. (2016). Deep Learning, MIT Press.
8. Mitchell, T.M. (1997). Machine Learning, McGraw-Hill.
9. A Formal Definition of Big Data Based on Its Essential Features10.1108/LR-06-2015-0061 ↗
10. Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural, Technological, and Scholarly Phenomenon10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878 ↗
11. Leslie, D. (2019). Understanding Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Safety: A Guide for the Responsible Design and Implementation of AI Systems in the Public Sector, Zenodo.10.2139/ssrn.3403301 ↗
12. What Is Computer Ethics?10.1111/j.1467-9973.1985.tb00173.x ↗
13. Why Machine Ethics?10.1109/MIS.2006.83 ↗
14. Machine Ethics: Creating an Ethical Intelligent Agent
15. From Machine Ethics to Computational Ethics10.1007/s00146-020-01010-1 ↗
16. Zalta, E.N. (2020). Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
18. Artificial Moral Agents: A Survey of the Current Status10.1007/s11948-019-00151-x ↗
19. The Nature, Importance, and Difficulty of Machine Ethics10.1109/MIS.2006.80 ↗
20. Artificial Morality: Top-down, Bottom-up, and Hybrid Approaches10.1007/s10676-006-0004-4 ↗
21. Briggle, A., and Mitcham, C. (2012). Ethics and Science: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press. Cambridge Applied Ethics.10.1017/CBO9781139034111 ↗
22. Singer, P. (2011). Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press. [3rd ed.].10.1017/CBO9780511975950 ↗
23. Implementations in Machine Ethics: A Survey10.1145/3419633 ↗
24. Toward Ethical Information Systems: The Contribution of Discourse Ethics10.2307/25750707 ↗
25. Goertzel, B., and Pennachin, C. (2007). Artificial General Intelligence, Springer.10.1007/978-3-540-68677-4 ↗
26. The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence10.1017/CBO9781139046855.020 ↗
27. Righetti, L., Sharkey, N., Arkin, R., Ansell, D., Sassoli, M., Heyns, C., Asaro, P., and Lee, P. (2014). Autonomous Weapon Systems: Technical, Military, Legal and Humanitarian Aspects, ICRC.
28. Planning and Decision-Making for Autonomous Vehicles10.1146/annurev-control-060117-105157 ↗
29. On the Ethics of Algorithmic Decision-Making in Healthcare10.1136/medethics-2019-105586 ↗
30. High-Performance Medicine: The Convergence of Human and Artificial Intelligence10.1038/s41591-018-0300-7 ↗
31. Applied Artificial Intelligence and Trust—The Case of Autonomous Vehicles and Medical Assistance Devices10.1016/j.techfore.2015.12.014 ↗
32. London, A.J. (2018). Groundhog Day for Medical Artificial Intelligence. Hastings Cent. Rep., 48.10.1002/hast.842 ↗
33. Big Data’s Disparate Impact
34. Big Data, Bigger Dilemmas: A Critical Review: Big Data, Bigger Dilemmas: A Critical Review10.1002/asi.23294 ↗
35. The Challenge of “Big Data”: What Does It Mean for the Qualitative Research Industry?10.1108/QMR-10-2013-0076 ↗
36. Situating Methods in the Magic of Big Data and AI10.1080/03637751.2017.1375130 ↗
37. Data Science Ethical Considerations: A Systematic Literature Review and Proposed Project Framework10.1007/s10676-019-09502-5 ↗
38. Aspects of Data Ethics in a Changing World: Where Are We Now?10.1089/big.2018.0083 ↗
39. Can We Open the Black Box of AI?10.1038/538020a ↗
40. Diakopoulos, N. (2014). Algorithmic Accountability Reporting: On the Investigation of Black Boxes, Columbia University Libraries.10.1080/21670811.2014.976411 ↗
41. Barocas, S. (2014, January 24–27). Data Mining and the Discourse on Discrimination. Proceedings of the Data Ethics Workshop, Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, New York, NY, USA.
42. Suresh, H., and Guttag, J.V. (2020). A Framework for Understanding Unintended Consequences of Machine Learning. arXiv.
43. The Ethics of Algorithms: Mapping the Debate10.1177/2053951716679679 ↗
44. Design AI so That It’s Fair10.1038/d41586-018-05707-8 ↗
45. Datta, A., Tschantz, M.C., and Datta, A. (2015). Automated Experiments on Ad Privacy Settings: A Tale of Opacity, Choice, and Discrimination. arXiv.10.1515/popets-2015-0007 ↗
46. Bolukbasi, T., Chang, K.-W., Zou, J., Saligrama, V., and Kalai, A. (2016). Man Is to Computer Programmer as Woman Is to Homemaker? Debiasing Word Embeddings. arXiv.
47. Shankar, S., Halpern, Y., Breck, E., Atwood, J., Wilson, J., and Sculley, D. (2017). No Classification without Representation: Assessing Geodiversity Issues in Open Data Sets for the Developing World. arXiv.
48. Bender, E.M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., and Shmitchell, S. (2021, January 3). On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?. Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, Virtual.10.1145/3442188.3445922 ↗
49. Samorani, M., Harris, S.L., Blount, L.G., Lu, H., and Santoro, M.A. (2021). Overbooked and Overlooked: Machine Learning and Racial Bias in Medical Appointment Scheduling. Manuf. Serv. Oper. Manag.10.1287/msom.2021.0999 ↗
50. Dissecting Racial Bias in an Algorithm Used to Manage the Health of Populations10.1126/science.aax2342 ↗
51. Machine Learning and Health Care Disparities in Dermatology10.1001/jamadermatol.2018.2348 ↗
52. Fairness in Precision Medicine
53. Banerjee, I., Bhimireddy, A.R., Burns, J.L., Celi, L.A., Chen, L.-C., Correa, R., Dullerud, N., Ghassemi, M., Huang, S.-C., and Kuo, P.-C. (2021). Reading Race: AI Recognises Patient’s Racial Identity In Medical Images. arXiv.
54. What Is Data Ethics?
55. Big Data Ethics
56. (2021, February 10). AI Ethics Guidelines Global Inventory by Algorithm Watch. Available online: https://inventory.algorithmwatch.org.
57. The Global Landscape of AI Ethics Guidelines10.1038/s42256-019-0088-2 ↗
58. The Ethics of AI Ethics: An Evaluation of Guidelines10.1007/s11023-020-09517-8 ↗
59. Fjeld, J., Achten, N., Hilligoss, H., Nagy, A., and Srikumar, M. (2020). Principled Artificial Intelligence: Mapping Consensus in Ethical and Rights-Based Approaches to Principles for AI, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.10.2139/ssrn.3518482 ↗
60. AI4People—An Ethical Framework for a Good AI Society: Opportunities, Risks, Principles, and Recommendations10.1007/s11023-018-9482-5 ↗
61. Zeng, Y., Lu, E., and Huangfu, C. (2018). Linking Artificial Intelligence Principles. arXiv.
62. Beauchamp, T.L., and Childress, J.F. (2019). Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Oxford University Press. [8th ed.].
63. Locating Ethics in Data Science: Responsibility and Accountability in Global and Distributed Knowledge Production Systems
64. Whittlestone, J., Nyrup, R., Alexandrova, A., and Cave, S. (2019, January 27). The Role and Limits of Principles in AI Ethics: Towards a Focus on Tensions. Proceedings of the 2019 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, Honolulu, HI, USA.10.1145/3306618.3314289 ↗
65. From What to How: An Initial Review of Publicly Available AI Ethics Tools, Methods and Research to Translate Principles into Practices10.1007/s11948-019-00165-5 ↗
66. Actionable Principles for Artificial Intelligence Policy: Three Pathways10.1007/s11948-020-00277-3 ↗
67. Beauchamp, T.L., and Childress, J.F. (1994). Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Oxford University Press. [4th ed.].
68. Bietti, E. (2020, January 27–30). From Ethics Washing to Ethics Bashing: A View on Tech Ethics from within Moral Philosophy. Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, Barcelona, Spain.10.1145/3351095.3372860 ↗
69. Translating Principles into Practices of Digital Ethics: Five Risks of Being Unethical10.1007/s13347-019-00354-x ↗
70. AI Ethics Should Not Remain Toothless! A Call to Bring Back the Teeth of Ethics
71. Don’t Let Industry Write the Rules for AI10.1038/d41586-019-01413-1 ↗
72. McNamara, A., Smith, J., and Murphy-Hill, E. (2018, January 4–9). Does ACM’s Code of Ethics Change Ethical Decision Making in Software Development?. Proceedings of the 2018 26th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, Lake Buena Vista, FL, USA.10.1145/3236024.3264833 ↗
73. Bad Apples, Bad Cases, and Bad Barrels: Meta-Analytic Evidence about Sources of Unethical Decisions at Work10.1037/a0017103 ↗
74. Draft High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG) (2018). The European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence: Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, European Commission.
75. The CRISP-DM Model: The New Blueprint for Data Mining
76. Binns, R., and Gallo, V. (2021, July 14). An Overview of the Auditing Framework for Artificial Intelligence and Its Core Components. Available online: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/ai-blog-an-overview-of-the-auditing-framework-for-artificial-intelligence-and-its-core-components/.
77. High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG) (2019). Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, European Commission.
78. Paullada, A., Raji, I.D., Bender, E.M., Denton, E., and Hanna, A. (2020). Data and Its (Dis)Contents: A Survey of Dataset Development and Use in Machine Learning Research. arXiv.10.1016/j.patter.2021.100336 ↗
79. Everyone Should Decide How Their Digital Data Are Used—Not Just Tech Companies10.1038/d41586-021-01812-3 ↗
80. Mehrabi, N., Morstatter, F., Saxena, N., Lerman, K., and Galstyan, A. (2019). A Survey on Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning. arXiv.
81. Bellamy, R.K.E., Dey, K., Hind, M., Hoffman, S.C., Houde, S., Kannan, K., Lohia, P., Martino, J., Mehta, S., and Mojsilovic, A. (2018). AI Fairness 360: An Extensible Toolkit for Detecting, Understanding, and Mitigating Unwanted Algorithmic Bias. arXiv.
82. Fairer Machine Learning in the Real World: Mitigating Discrimination without Collecting Sensitive Data10.1177/2053951717743530 ↗
83. Gebru, T., Morgenstern, J., Vecchione, B., Vaughan, J.W., Wallach, H., Daumé III, H., and Crawford, K. (2020). Datasheets for Datasets. arXiv.10.1145/3458723 ↗
84. Delacroix, S., and Montgomery, J. (2020). From Research Data Ethics Principles to Practice: Data Trusts as a Governance Tool, Social Science Research Network.10.2139/ssrn.3736090 ↗
85. Molnar, C. (2021). Interpretable Machine Learning, Leanpub.
86. European Union Regulations on Algorithmic Decision-Making and a “Right to Explanation”
87. Why a Right to Explanation of Automated Decision-Making Does Not Exist in the General Data Protection Regulation10.1093/idpl/ipx005 ↗
88. Secure, Privacy-Preserving and Federated Machine Learning in Medical Imaging10.1038/s42256-020-0186-1 ↗
89. When Machine Learning Meets Privacy: A Survey and Outlook
90. Hao, K. (2021, April 13). Big Tech’s Guide to Talking about AI Ethics. Available online: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/04/13/1022568/big-tech-ai-ethics-guide/.
91. What Is Responsible and Sustainable Data Science?10.1177/2053951719858114 ↗
92. Faultless Responsibility: On the Nature and Allocation of Moral Responsibility for Distributed Moral Actions
93. Getting into the Engine Room: A Blueprint to Investigate the Shadowy Steps of AI Ethics10.1007/s00146-020-01069-w ↗
94. The Struggle to Govern the Commons10.1126/science.1091015 ↗
95. World Health Organization (2021). Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health: WHO Guidance, World Health Organization.
96. Ii, P., and Nicholson, W. (2019). Medical AI and Contextual Bias, Social Science Research Network.
97. Ethical Implications and Accountability of Algorithms10.1007/s10551-018-3921-3 ↗
98. Garzcarek, U., and Steuer, D. (2019). Approaching Ethical Guidelines for Data Scientists. arXiv.10.1007/978-3-030-25147-5_10 ↗
99. Principles Alone Cannot Guarantee Ethical AI10.1038/s42256-019-0114-4 ↗
100. Miles, S.H. (2005). The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine, Oxford University Press.