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

Fairness

Use of AI will include safeguards to manage data bias or data quality risks The best use of AI will depend on data quality and relevant data. It will also rely on careful data management to ensure potential data biases are identified and appropriately managed. AI solutions that rely on sub optimal quality data may result in sub optimal project outcomes and recommendations. Algorithms that contain systemic and repeatable errors may lead to prejudiced decisions or outcomes. Projects should clearly demonstrate: a data model that is designed with a focus on diversity and inclusion use of a dataset that is representative for the problem to be solved regular monitoring of data models and outputs.

Principle: Mandatory Ethical Principles for the use of AI, 2024

Published by Government of New South Welsh, Australia

Related Principles

2. Fairness and Equity

Deployers should have safeguards in place to ensure that algorithmic decisions do not further exacerbate or amplify existing discriminatory or unjust impacts across different demographics and the design, development, and deployment of AI systems should not result in unfair biasness or discrimination. An example of such safeguards would include human interventions and checks on the algorithms and its outputs. Deployers of AI systems should conduct regular testing of such systems to confirm if there is bias and where bias is confirmed, make the necessary adjustments to rectify imbalances to ensure equity. With the rapid developments in the AI space, AI systems are increasingly used to aid decision making. For example, AI systems are currently used to screen resumes in job application processes, predict the credit worthiness of consumers and provide agronomic advice to farmers. If not properly managed, an AI system’s outputs used to make decisions with significant impact on individuals could perpetuate existing discriminatory or unjust impacts to specific demographics. To mitigate discrimination, it is important that the design, development, and deployment of AI systems align with fairness and equity principles. In addition, the datasets used to train the AI systems should be diverse and representative. Appropriate measures should be taken to mitigate potential biases during data collection and pre processing, training, and inference. For example, thetraining and test dataset for an AI system used in the education sector should be adequately representative of the student population by including students of different genders and ethnicities.

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

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

III. Privacy and Data Governance

Privacy and data protection must be guaranteed at all stages of the AI system’s life cycle. Digital records of human behaviour may allow AI systems to infer not only individuals’ preferences, age and gender but also their sexual orientation, religious or political views. To allow individuals to trust the data processing, it must be ensured that they have full control over their own data, and that data concerning them will not be used to harm or discriminate against them. In addition to safeguarding privacy and personal data, requirements must be fulfilled to ensure high quality AI systems. The quality of the data sets used is paramount to the performance of AI systems. When data is gathered, it may reflect socially constructed biases, or contain inaccuracies, errors and mistakes. This needs to be addressed prior to training an AI system with any given data set. In addition, the integrity of the data must be ensured. Processes and data sets used must be tested and documented at each step such as planning, training, testing and deployment. This should also apply to AI systems that were not developed in house but acquired elsewhere. Finally, the access to data must be adequately governed and controlled.

Published by European Commission in Key requirements for trustworthy AI, Apr 8, 2019

· Build and Validate:

1 To develop a sound and functional AI system that is both reliable and safe, the AI system’s technical construct should be accompanied by a comprehensive methodology to test the quality of the predictive data based systems and models according to standard policies and protocols. 2 To ensure the technical robustness of an AI system rigorous testing, validation, and re assessment as well as the integration of adequate mechanisms of oversight and controls into its development is required. System integration test sign off should be done with relevant stakeholders to minimize risks and liability. 3 Automated AI systems involving scenarios where decisions are understood to have an impact that is irreversible or difficult to reverse or may involve life and death decisions should trigger human oversight and final determination. Furthermore, AI systems should not be used for social scoring or mass surveillance purposes.

Published by SDAIA in AI Ethics Principles, Sept 14, 2022

3 Ensure transparency, explainability and intelligibility

AI should be intelligible or understandable to developers, users and regulators. Two broad approaches to ensuring intelligibility are improving the transparency and explainability of AI technology. Transparency requires that sufficient information (described below) be published or documented before the design and deployment of an AI technology. Such information should facilitate meaningful public consultation and debate on how the AI technology is designed and how it should be used. Such information should continue to be published and documented regularly and in a timely manner after an AI technology is approved for use. Transparency will improve system quality and protect patient and public health safety. For instance, system evaluators require transparency in order to identify errors, and government regulators rely on transparency to conduct proper, effective oversight. It must be possible to audit an AI technology, including if something goes wrong. Transparency should include accurate information about the assumptions and limitations of the technology, operating protocols, the properties of the data (including methods of data collection, processing and labelling) and development of the algorithmic model. AI technologies should be explainable to the extent possible and according to the capacity of those to whom the explanation is directed. Data protection laws already create specific obligations of explainability for automated decision making. Those who might request or require an explanation should be well informed, and the educational information must be tailored to each population, including, for example, marginalized populations. Many AI technologies are complex, and the complexity might frustrate both the explainer and the person receiving the explanation. There is a possible trade off between full explainability of an algorithm (at the cost of accuracy) and improved accuracy (at the cost of explainability). All algorithms should be tested rigorously in the settings in which the technology will be used in order to ensure that it meets standards of safety and efficacy. The examination and validation should include the assumptions, operational protocols, data properties and output decisions of the AI technology. Tests and evaluations should be regular, transparent and of sufficient breadth to cover differences in the performance of the algorithm according to race, ethnicity, gender, age and other relevant human characteristics. There should be robust, independent oversight of such tests and evaluation to ensure that they are conducted safely and effectively. Health care institutions, health systems and public health agencies should regularly publish information about how decisions have been made for adoption of an AI technology and how the technology will be evaluated periodically, its uses, its known limitations and the role of decision making, which can facilitate external auditing and oversight.

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