AI Ethics Principles in Practice: Perspectives of Designers and Developers
This addresses the challenge of applying AI ethics in practice for researchers and engineers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing principles without introducing new methods.
The study investigated the gap between high-level AI ethics principles and practical implementation by interviewing designers and developers at Australia's CSIRO, revealing tensions and trade-offs among principles and providing suggestions for better support mechanisms.
As consensus across the various published AI ethics principles is approached, a gap remains between high-level principles and practical techniques that can be readily adopted to design and develop responsible AI systems. We examine the practices and experiences of researchers and engineers from Australia's national scientific research agency (CSIRO), who are involved in designing and developing AI systems for many application areas. Semi-structured interviews were used to examine how the practices of the participants relate to and align with a set of high-level AI ethics principles proposed by the Australian Government. The principles comprise: (1) privacy protection and security, (2) reliability and safety, (3) transparency and explainability, (4) fairness, (5) contestability, (6) accountability, (7) human-centred values, (8) human, social and environmental wellbeing. Discussions on the gained insights from the interviews include various tensions and trade-offs between the principles, and provide suggestions for implementing each high-level principle. We also present suggestions aiming to enhance associated support mechanisms.