4. Respect for Privacy

AI development should respect and protect the privacy of individuals and fully protect an individual’s rights to know and to choose. Boundaries and rules should be established for the collection, storage, processing and use of personal information. Personal privacy authorization and revocation mechanisms should be established and updated. Stealing, juggling, leaking and other forms of illegal collection and use of personal information should be strictly prohibited.
Principle: Governance Principles for the New Generation Artificial Intelligence--Developing Responsible Artificial Intelligence, Jun 17, 2019

Published by National Governance Committee for the New Generation Artificial Intelligence, China

Related Principles

5. Privacy and Data Governance

AI systems should have proper mechanisms in place to ensure data privacy and protection and maintain and protect the quality and integrity of data throughout their entire lifecycle. Data protocols need to be set up to govern who can access data and when data can be accessed. Data privacy and protection should be respected and upheld during the design, development, and deployment of AI systems. The way data is collected, stored, generated, and deleted throughout the AI system lifecycle must comply with applicable data protection laws, data governance legislation, and ethical principles. Some data protection and privacy laws in ASEAN include Malaysia’s Personal Data Protection Act 2010, the Philippines’ Data Privacy Act of 2012, Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act 2012, Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act 2019, Indonesia’s Personal Data Protection Law 2022, and Vietnam’s Personal Data Protection Decree 2023. Organisations should be transparent about their data collection practices, including the types of data collected, how it is used, and who has access to it. Organisations should ensure that necessary consent is obtained from individuals before collecting, using, or disclosing personal data for AI development and deployment, or otherwise have appropriate legal basis to collect, use or disclose personal data without consent. Unnecessary or irrelevant data should not be gathered to prevent potential misuse. Data protection and governance frameworks should be set up and adhered to by developers and deployers of AI systems. These frameworks should also be periodically reviewed and updated in accordance with applicable privacy and data protection laws. For example, data protection impact assessments (DPIA) help organisations determine how data processing systems, procedures, or technologies affect individuals’ privacy and eliminate risks that might violate compliance7. However, it is important to note that DPIAs are much narrower in scope than an overall impact assessment for use of AI systems and are not sufficient as an AI risk assessment. Other components will need to be considered for a full assessment of risks associated with AI systems. Developers and deployers of AI systems should also incorporate a privacy by design principle when developing and deploying AI systems. Privacy by design is an approach that embeds privacy in every stage of the system development lifecycle. Data privacy is essential in gaining the public’s trust in technological advances. Another consideration is investing in privacy enhancing technologies to preserve privacy while allowing personal data to be used for innovation. Privacy enhancing technologies include, but are not limited to, differential privacy, where small changes are made to raw data to securely de identify inputs without having a significant impact on the results of the AI system, and zero knowledge proofs (ZKP), where ZKP hide the underlying data and answer simple questions about whether something is true or false without revealing additional information

Published by ASEAN in ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics, 2024

(h) Data protection and privacy

In an age of ubiquitous and massive collection of data through digital communication technologies, the right to protection of personal information and the right to respect for privacy are crucially challenged. Both physical AI robots as part of the Internet of Things, as well as AI softbots that operate via the World Wide Web must comply with data protection regulations and not collect and spread data or be run on sets of data for whose use and dissemination no informed consent has been given. ‘Autonomous’ systems must not interfere with the right to private life which comprises the right to be free from technologies that influence personal development and opinions, the right to establish and develop relationships with other human beings, and the right to be free from surveillance. Also in this regard, exact criteria should be defined and mechanisms established that ensure ethical development and ethically correct application of ‘autonomous’ systems. In light of concerns with regard to the implications of ‘autonomous’ systems on private life and privacy, consideration may be given to the ongoing debate about the introduction of two new rights: the right to meaningful human contact and the right to not be profiled, measured, analysed, coached or nudged.

Published by European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, European Commission in Ethical principles and democratic prerequisites, Mar 9, 2018

3 PROTECTION OF PRIVACY AND INTIMACY PRINCIPLE

Privacy and intimacy must be protected from AIS intrusion and data acquisition and archiving systems (DAAS). 1) Personal spaces in which people are not subjected to surveillance or digital evaluation must be protected from the intrusion of AIS and data acquisition and archiving systems (DAAS). 2) The intimacy of thoughts and emotions must be strictly protected from AIS and DAAS uses capable of causing harm, especially uses that impose moral judgments on people or their lifestyle choices. 3) People must always have the right to digital disconnection in their private lives, and AIS should explicitly offer the option to disconnect at regular intervals, without encouraging people to stay connected. 4) People must have extensive control over information regarding their preferences. AIS must not create individual preference profiles to influence the behavior of the individuals without their free and informed consent. 5) DAAS must guarantee data confidentiality and personal profile anonymity. 6) Every person must be able to exercise extensive control over their personal data, especially when it comes to its collection, use, and dissemination. Access to AIS and digital services by individuals must not be made conditional on their abandoning control or ownership of their personal data. 7) Individuals should be free to donate their personal data to research organizations in order to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. 8) The integrity of one’s personal identity must be guaranteed. AIS must not be used to imitate or alter a person’s appearance, voice, or other individual characteristics in order to damage one’s reputation or manipulate other people.

Published by University of Montreal in The Montreal Declaration for a Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence, Dec 4, 2018

· Right to Privacy, and Data Protection

32. Privacy, a right essential to the protection of human dignity, human autonomy and human agency, must be respected, protected and promoted throughout the life cycle of AI systems. It is important that data for AI systems be collected, used, shared, archived and deleted in ways that are consistent with international law and in line with the values and principles set forth in this Recommendation, while respecting relevant national, regional and international legal frameworks. 33. Adequate data protection frameworks and governance mechanisms should be established in a multi stakeholder approach at the national or international level, protected by judicial systems, and ensured throughout the life cycle of AI systems. Data protection frameworks and any related mechanisms should take reference from international data protection principles and standards concerning the collection, use and disclosure of personal data and exercise of their rights by data subjects while ensuring a legitimate aim and a valid legal basis for the processing of personal data, including informed consent. 34. Algorithmic systems require adequate privacy impact assessments, which also include societal and ethical considerations of their use and an innovative use of the privacy by design approach. AI actors need to ensure that they are accountable for the design and implementation of AI systems in such a way as to ensure that personal information is protected throughout the life cycle of the AI system.

Published by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in The Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Nov 24, 2021

1 Protect autonomy

Adoption of AI can lead to situations in which decision making could be or is in fact transferred to machines. The principle of autonomy requires that any extension of machine autonomy not undermine human autonomy. In the context of health care, this means that humans should remain in full control of health care systems and medical decisions. AI systems should be designed demonstrably and systematically to conform to the principles and human rights with which they cohere; more specifically, they should be designed to assist humans, whether they be medical providers or patients, in making informed decisions. Human oversight may depend on the risks associated with an AI system but should always be meaningful and should thus include effective, transparent monitoring of human values and moral considerations. In practice, this could include deciding whether to use an AI system for a particular health care decision, to vary the level of human discretion and decision making and to develop AI technologies that can rank decisions when appropriate (as opposed to a single decision). These practicescan ensure a clinician can override decisions made by AI systems and that machine autonomy can be restricted and made “intrinsically reversible”. Respect for autonomy also entails the related duties to protect privacy and confidentiality and to ensure informed, valid consent by adopting appropriate legal frameworks for data protection. These should be fully supported and enforced by governments and respected by companies and their system designers, programmers, database creators and others. AI technologies should not be used for experimentation or manipulation of humans in a health care system without valid informed consent. The use of machine learning algorithms in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment plans should be incorporated into the process for informed and valid consent. Essential services should not be circumscribed or denied if an individual withholds consent and that additional incentives or inducements should not be offered by either a government or private parties to individuals who do provide consent. Data protection laws are one means of safeguarding individual rights and place obligations on data controllers and data processors. Such laws are necessary to protect privacy and the confidentiality of patient data and to establish patients’ control over their data. Construed broadly, data protection laws should also make it easy for people to access their own health data and to move or share those data as they like. Because machine learning requires large amounts of data – big data – these laws are increasingly important.

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