Ethics in the Age of AI: An Analysis of AI Practitioners' Awareness and Challenges
This research addresses the problem of integrating ethics into AI development for practitioners and companies, but it is incremental as it surveys existing views without proposing new solutions.
The study surveyed 100 AI practitioners to assess their awareness of AI ethics and challenges in implementation, finding that most had reasonable familiarity primarily from workplace policies, with privacy protection being the most recognized principle, and identified general, technology-related, and human-related challenges.
Ethics in AI has become a debated topic of public and expert discourse in recent years. But what do people who build AI - AI practitioners - have to say about their understanding of AI ethics and the challenges associated with incorporating it in the AI-based systems they develop? Understanding AI practitioners' views on AI ethics is important as they are the ones closest to the AI systems and can bring about changes and improvements. We conducted a survey aimed at understanding AI practitioners' awareness of AI ethics and their challenges in incorporating ethics. Based on 100 AI practitioners' responses, our findings indicate that majority of AI practitioners had a reasonable familiarity with the concept of AI ethics, primarily due to workplace rules and policies. Privacy protection and security was the ethical principle that majority of them were aware of. Formal education/training was considered somewhat helpful in preparing practitioners to incorporate AI ethics. The challenges that AI practitioners faced in the development of ethical AI-based systems included (i) general challenges, (ii) technology-related challenges and (iii) human-related challenges. We also identified areas needing further investigation and provided recommendations to assist AI practitioners and companies in incorporating ethics into AI development.