Safe and Ethical AI (SEA) Platform Network · Linking Artificial Intelligence Principles (LAIP)

4. Fairness and diversity

Developers of AI technology should minimize systemic biases in AI solutions that may result from deviations inherent in data and algorithms used to develop solutions. Everyone should be able to use an artificial intelligence solution regardless of age, gender, race or other characteristics.

Principle: Artificial Intelligence Application Criteria, Jul 8, 2019

Published by Megvii

Related Principles

· 4. The Principle of Justice: “Be Fair”

For the purposes of these Guidelines, the principle of justice imparts that the development, use, and regulation of AI systems must be fair. Developers and implementers need to ensure that individuals and minority groups maintain freedom from bias, stigmatisation and discrimination. Additionally, the positives and negatives resulting from AI should be evenly distributed, avoiding to place vulnerable demographics in a position of greater vulnerability and striving for equal opportunity in terms of access to education, goods, services and technology amongst human beings, without discrimination. Justice also means that AI systems must provide users with effective redress if harm occurs, or effective remedy if data practices are no longer aligned with human beings’ individual or collective preferences. Lastly, the principle of justice also commands those developing or implementing AI to be held to high standards of accountability. Humans might benefit from procedures enabling the benchmarking of AI performance with (ethical) expectations.

Published by The European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence in Draft Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, Dec 18, 2018

· 5. Non Discrimination

Discrimination concerns the variability of AI results between individuals or groups of people based on the exploitation of differences in their characteristics that can be considered either intentionally or unintentionally (such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or age), which may negatively impact such individuals or groups. Direct or indirect discrimination through the use of AI can serve to exploit prejudice and marginalise certain groups. Those in control of algorithms may intentionally try to achieve unfair, discriminatory, or biased outcomes in order to exclude certain groups of persons. Intentional harm can, for instance, be achieved by explicit manipulation of the data to exclude certain groups. Harm may also result from exploitation of consumer biases or unfair competition, such as homogenisation of prices by means of collusion or non transparent market. Discrimination in an AI context can occur unintentionally due to, for example, problems with data such as bias, incompleteness and bad governance models. Machine learning algorithms identify patterns or regularities in data, and will therefore also follow the patterns resulting from biased and or incomplete data sets. An incomplete data set may not reflect the target group it is intended to represent. While it might be possible to remove clearly identifiable and unwanted bias when collecting data, data always carries some kind of bias. Therefore, the upstream identification of possible bias, which later can be rectified, is important to build in to the development of AI. Moreover, it is important to acknowledge that AI technology can be employed to identify this inherent bias, and hence to support awareness training on our own inherent bias. Accordingly, it can also assist us in making less biased decisions.

Published by The European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence in Draft Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, Dec 18, 2018

8. Principle of fairness

AI service providers, business users, and data providers should take into consideration that individuals will not be discriminated unfairly by the judgments of AI systems or AI services. [Main points to discuss] A) Attention to the representativeness of data used for learning or other methods of AI AI service providers, business users, and data providers may be expected to pay attention to the representativeness of data used for learning or other methods of AI and the social bias inherent in the data so that individuals should not be unfairly discriminated against due to their race, religion, gender, etc. as a result of the judgment of AI. In light of the characteristics of the technologies to be used and their usage, in what cases and to what extent is attention expected to be paid to the representativeness of data used for learning or other methods and the social bias inherent in the data? Note: The representativeness of data refers to the fact that data sampled and used do not distort the propensity of the population of data. B) Attention to unfair discrimination by algorithm AI service providers and business users may be expected to pay attention to the possibility that individuals may be unfairly discriminated against due to their race, religion, gender, etc. by the algorithm of AI. C) Human intervention Regarding the judgment made by AI, AI service providers and business users may be expected to make judgments as to whether to use the judgments of AI, how to use it, or other matters, with consideration of social contexts and reasonable expectations of people in the utilization of AI, so that individuals should not be unfairly discriminated against due to their race, religion, gender, etc. In light of the characteristics of the technologies to be used and their usage, in what cases and to what extent is human intervention expected?

Published by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), the Government of Japan in Draft AI Utilization Principles, Jul 17, 2018

Fourth principle: Bias and Harm Mitigation

Those responsible for AI enabled systems must proactively mitigate the risk of unexpected or unintended biases or harms resulting from these systems, whether through their original rollout, or as they learn, change or are redeployed. AI enabled systems offer significant benefits for Defence. However, the use of AI enabled systems may also cause harms (beyond those already accepted under existing ethical and legal frameworks) to those using them or affected by their deployment. These may range from harms caused by a lack of suitable privacy for personal data, to unintended military harms due to system unpredictability. Such harms may change over time as systems learn and evolve, or as they are deployed beyond their original setting. Of particular concern is the risk of discriminatory outcomes resulting from algorithmic bias or skewed data sets. Defence must ensure that its AI enabled systems do not result in unfair bias or discrimination, in line with the MOD’s ongoing strategies for diversity and inclusion. A principle of bias and harm mitigation requires the assessment and, wherever possible, the mitigation of these biases or harms. This includes addressing bias in algorithmic decision making, carefully curating and managing datasets, setting safeguards and performance thresholds throughout the system lifecycle, managing environmental effects, and applying strict development criteria for new systems, or existing systems being applied to a new context.

Published by The Ministry of Defence (MOD), United Kingdom in Ethical Principles for AI in Defence, Jun 15, 2022

5 Ensure inclusiveness and equity

Inclusiveness requires that AI used in health care is designed to encourage the widest possible appropriate, equitable use and access, irrespective of age, gender, income, ability or other characteristics. Institutions (e.g. companies, regulatory agencies, health systems) should hire employees from diverse backgrounds, cultures and disciplines to develop, monitor and deploy AI. AI technologies should be designed by and evaluated with the active participation of those who are required to use the system or will be affected by it, including providers and patients, and such participants should be sufficiently diverse. Participation can also be improved by adopting open source software or making source codes publicly available. AI technology – like any other technology – should be shared as widely as possible. AI technologies should be available not only in HIC and for use in contexts and for needs that apply to high income settings but they should also be adaptable to the types of devices, telecommunications infrastructure and data transfer capacity in LMIC. AI developers and vendors should also consider the diversity of languages, ability and forms of communication around the world to avoid barriers to use. Industry and governments should strive to ensure that the “digital divide” within and between countries is not widened and ensure equitable access to novel AI technologies. AI technologies should not be biased. Bias is a threat to inclusiveness and equity because it represents a departure, often arbitrary, from equal treatment. For example, a system designed to diagnose cancerous skin lesions that is trained with data on one skin colour may not generate accurate results for patients with a different skin colour, increasing the risk to their health. Unintended biases that may emerge with AI should be avoided or identified and mitigated. AI developers should be aware of the possible biases in their design, implementation and use and the potential harm that biases can cause to individuals and society. These parties also have a duty to address potential bias and avoid introducing or exacerbating health care disparities, including when testing or deploying new AI technologies in vulnerable populations. AI developers should ensure that AI data, and especially training data, do not include sampling bias and are therefore accurate, complete and diverse. If a particular racial or ethnic minority (or other group) is underrepresented in a dataset, oversampling of that group relative to its population size may be necessary to ensure that an AI technology achieves the same quality of results in that population as in better represented groups. AI technologies should minimize inevitable power disparities between providers and patients or between companies that create and deploy AI technologies and those that use or rely on them. Public sector agencies should have control over the data collectedby private health care providers, and their shared responsibilities should be defined and respected. Everyone – patients, health care providers and health care systems – should be able to benefit from an AI technology and not just the technology providers. AI technologies should be accompanied by means to provide patients with knowledge and skills to better understand their health status and to communicate effectively with health care providers. Future health literacy should include an element of information technology literacy. The effects of use of AI technologies must be monitored and evaluated, including disproportionate effects on specific groups of people when they mirror or exacerbate existing forms of bias and discrimination. Special provision should be made to protect the rights and welfare of vulnerable persons, with mechanisms for redress if such bias and discrimination emerges or is alleged.

Published by World Health Organization (WHO) in Key ethical principles for use of artificial intelligence for health, Jun 28, 2021