🤖AI Ethics Unit 12 – Case Studies in AI Ethics

Key Ethical Concepts

• Autonomy involves respecting the right of individuals to make their own choices and decisions without undue influence or coercion
• Beneficence focuses on taking actions that promote the wellbeing and best interests of others, striving to do good and maximize benefits
• Non-maleficence emphasizes avoiding harm and minimizing risks or negative consequences for individuals and society as a whole
• Justice encompasses fairness, equality, and the equitable distribution of benefits and burdens across all stakeholders
• Privacy concerns protecting personal information, data security, and the right to control one's own data in an increasingly digital world
• Transparency requires openness, clear communication, and the ability to explain and justify decisions made by AI systems
• Accountability involves taking responsibility for the actions and outcomes of AI systems, ensuring there are mechanisms for redress and holding relevant parties liable

Real-World AI Dilemmas

• Facial recognition technology raises privacy concerns and potential for misuse (law enforcement profiling)
• Autonomous vehicles face ethical challenges in emergency situations (trolley problem scenarios)
  • Prioritizing passenger safety vs minimizing overall harm
  • Balancing individual rights with societal benefits
• AI-powered hiring tools risk perpetuating biases and discrimination in employment decisions
• Social media algorithms can amplify misinformation and create echo chambers, undermining democratic discourse
• Predictive policing models may reinforce existing racial and socioeconomic disparities in the criminal justice system
• AI in healthcare poses questions around patient privacy, informed consent, and the role of human judgment
• Lethal autonomous weapons systems remove human control from life-and-death decisions on the battlefield

Stakeholder Analysis

• Identifying all parties who may be impacted by an AI system, including end-users, developers, policymakers, and society at large
• Assessing the interests, needs, and values of each stakeholder group to understand potential conflicts and alignment
• Engaging stakeholders through participatory design processes to gather input and feedback during AI development
• Considering power dynamics and ensuring marginalized or vulnerable populations have a voice in AI decision-making
• Balancing competing stakeholder interests and priorities to find ethical solutions that maximize benefits and minimize harms
• Continuously monitoring and reassessing stakeholder impacts throughout the AI lifecycle as new issues may arise over time

Ethical Frameworks Applied

• Utilitarianism seeks to maximize overall welfare and happiness for the greatest number of people
  • Focuses on outcomes rather than intentions or individual rights
  • Challenges in quantifying and comparing different types of utility
• Deontology emphasizes adherence to moral rules and duties, such as respect for persons and human dignity
  • Actions are judged based on their inherent rightness or wrongness, not just consequences
• Virtue ethics considers the moral character of decision-makers and what a virtuous person would do in a given situation
• Casuistry involves drawing on past cases and precedents to guide ethical reasoning in novel situations
• Principlism uses a set of core ethical principles (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice) to navigate moral dilemmas
• Care ethics prioritizes empathy, compassion, and attending to the needs of those in particular relationships or contexts

Decision-Making Processes

• Establishing clear ethical principles and values to guide AI development and deployment from the outset
• Implementing ethics by design, embedding ethical considerations into every stage of the AI lifecycle
• Utilizing algorithmic impact assessments to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks and harms
• Ensuring diverse and inclusive teams are involved in AI decision-making to challenge assumptions and blind spots
• Instituting human oversight and the ability for meaningful human control over AI systems
• Creating channels for ongoing monitoring, feedback, and whistleblowing to surface ethical issues
• Developing contingency plans and fail-safe mechanisms to address unintended consequences or system failures

Consequences and Outcomes

• Short-term vs long-term impacts of AI decisions on individuals, groups, and society as a whole
• Differential effects on advantaged and disadvantaged populations, potential to worsen existing inequalities
• Opportunity costs and trade-offs involved in pursuing certain AI applications over others (healthcare vs. entertainment)
• Environmental consequences of AI development, including energy consumption and e-waste generation
• Economic implications, such as job displacement, widening wealth gaps, and shifts in power dynamics
• Sociocultural ramifications, including changes in human relationships, autonomy, and privacy norms
• Geopolitical risks, such as the AI arms race and the use of AI for surveillance or information warfare

Lessons Learned

• The importance of proactive ethical deliberation and anticipating downstream consequences before deploying AI systems
• The need for interdisciplinary collaboration and diverse perspectives to fully grasp the ethical implications of AI
• The limitations of purely technical solutions and the ongoing role of human judgment in AI governance
• The challenges of aligning AI systems with complex and sometimes conflicting human values
• The necessity of building public trust through transparency, accountability, and responsiveness to societal concerns
• The potential for unintended consequences and the difficulty of predicting all possible outcomes in advance
• The importance of creating a culture of ethical awareness and responsibility among AI practitioners and organizations

Future Implications

• The transformative potential of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the existential risks it may pose
• The need for proactive governance frameworks and international cooperation to manage the development of AGI
• The possibility of AI systems exceeding human capabilities in various domains and the resulting shifts in power dynamics
• The impact of AI on the future of work, education, and social safety nets as automation advances
• The role of AI in shaping human identity, relationships, and meaning in an increasingly technologically mediated world
• The potential for AI to help solve global challenges (climate change, disease) but also to amplify risks (surveillance, cyberwarfare)
• The importance of ongoing public engagement, education, and democratic deliberation to shape the future of AI in alignment with societal values