9. Progressiveness

Favour implementations where the value created is materially better than not engaging in that project.
Principle: A compilation of existing AI ethical principles (Annex A), Jan 21, 2020

Published by Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), Singapore

Related Principles

1. Transparency and Explainability

Transparency refers to providing disclosure on when an AI system is being used and the involvement of an AI system in decision making, what kind of data it uses, and its purpose. By disclosing to individuals that AI is used in the system, individuals will become aware and can make an informed choice of whether to use the AIenabled system. Explainability is the ability to communicate the reasoning behind an AI system’s decision in a way that is understandable to a range of people, as it is not always clear how an AI system has arrived at a conclusion. This allows individuals to know the factors contributing to the AI system’s recommendation. In order to build public trust in AI, it is important to ensure that users are aware of the use of AI technology and understand how information from their interaction is used and how the AI system makes its decisions using the information provided. In line with the principle of transparency, deployers have a responsibility to clearly disclose the implementation of an AI system to stakeholders and foster general awareness of the AI system being used. With the increasing use of AI in many businesses and industries, the public is becoming more aware and interested in knowing when they are interacting with AI systems. Knowing when and how AI systems interact with users is also important in helping users discern the potential harm of interacting with an AI system that is not behaving as intended. In the past, AI algorithms have been found to discriminate against female job applicants and have failed to accurately recognise the faces of dark skinned women. It is important for users to be aware of the expected behaviour of the AI systems so they can make more informed decisions about the potential harm of interacting with AI systems. An example of transparency in an AI enabled ecommerce platform is informing users that their purchase history is used by the platform’s recommendation algorithm to identify similar products and display them on the users’ feeds. In line with the principle of explainability, developers and deployers designing, developing, and deploying AI systems should also strive to foster general understanding among users of how such systems work with simple and easy to understand explanations on how the AI system makes decisions. Understanding how AI systems work will help humans know when to trust its decisions. Explanations can have varying degrees of complexity, ranging from a simple text explanation of which factors more significantly affected the decisionmaking process to displaying a heatmap over the relevant text or on the area of an image that led to the system’s decision. For example, when an AI system is used to predict the likelihood of cardiac arrest in patients, explainability can be implemented by informing medical professionals of the most significant factors (e.g., age, blood pressure, etc.) that influenced the AI system’s decision so that they can subsequently make informed decisions on their own. Where “black box” models are deployed, rendering it difficult, if not impossible to provide explanations as to the workings of the AI system, outcome based explanations, with a focus on explaining the impact of decisionmaking or results flowing from the AI system may be relied on. Alternatively, deployers may also consider focusing on aspects relating to the quality of the AI system or preparing information that could build user confidence in the outcomes of an AI system’s processing behaviour. Some of these measures are: • Documenting the repeatability of results produced by the AI system. Some practices to demonstrate repeatability include conducting repeatability assessments to ensure deployments in live environments are repeatable and performing counterfactual fairness testing to ensure that the AI system’s decisions are the same in both the real world and in the counterfactual world. Repeatability refers to the ability of the system to consistently obtain the same results, given the same scenario. Repeatability often applies within the same environment, with the same data and the same computational conditions. • Ensuring traceability by building an audit trail to document the AI system development and decisionmaking process, implementing a black box recorder that captures all input data streams, or storing data appropriately to avoid degradation and alteration. • Facilitating auditability by keeping a comprehensive record of data provenance, procurement, preprocessing, lineage, storage, and security. Such information can also be centralised digitally in a process log to increase capacity to cater the presentation of results to different tiers of stakeholders with different interests and levels of expertise. Deployers should, however, note that auditability does not necessarily entail making certain confidential information about business models or intellectual property related to the AI system publicly available. A risk based approach can be taken towards identifying the subset of AI enabled features in the AI system for which implemented auditability is necessary to align with regulatory requirements or industry practices. • Using AI Model Cards, which are short documents accompanying trained machine learning models that disclose the context in which models are intended to be used, details of the performance evaluation procedures, and other relevant information. In cases where AI systems are procured directly from developers, deployers will have to work together with these developers to achieve transparency. More on this will be covered in later sections of the Guide.

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

· (2) Education

In a society premised on AI, we have to eliminate disparities, divisions, or socially weak people. Therefore, policy makers and managers of the enterprises involved in AI must have an accurate understanding of AI, the knowledge for proper use of AI in society and AI ethics, taking into account the complexity of AI and the possibility that AI can be misused intentionally. The AI user should understand the outline of AI and be educated to utilize it properly because AI is much more complicated than the already developed conventional tools. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of AI’s contributions to society, it is important for the developers of AI to learn about the social sciences, business models, and ethics, including normative awareness of norms and wide range of liberal arts not to mention the basis possibly generated by AI. From the above point of view, it is necessary to establish an educational environment that provides AI literacy according to the following principles, equally to every person. In order to get rid of disparity between people having a good knowledge about AI technology and those being weak in it, opportunities for education such as AI literacy are widely provided in early childhood education and primary and secondary education. The opportunities of learning about AI should be provided for the elderly people as well as workforce generation. Our society needs an education scheme by which anyone should be able to learn AI, mathematics, and data science beyond the boundaries of literature and science. Literacy education provides the following contents: 1) Data used by AI are usually contaminated by bias, 2) AI is easy to generate unwanted bias in its use, and 3) The issues of impartiality, fairness, and privacy protection which are inherent to actual use of AI. In a society in which AI is widely used, the educational environment is expected to change from the current unilateral and uniform teaching style to one that matches the interests and skill level of each individual person. Therefore, the society probably shares the view that the education system will change constantly to the above mentioned education style, regardless of the success experience in the educational system of the past. In education, it is especially important to avoid dropouts. For this, it is desirable to introduce an interactive educational environment which fully utilizes AI technologies and allows students to work together to feel a kind accomplishment. In order to develop such an educational environment, it is desirable that companies and citizens work on their own initiative, not to burden administrations and schools (teachers).

Published by Cabinet Office, Government of Japan in Social Principles of Human-centric AI, Dec 27, 2018

Preamble

Two of Deutsche Telekom’s most important goals are to keep being a trusted companion and to enhance customer experience. We see it as our responsibility as one of the leading ICT companies in Europe to foster the development of “intelligent technologies”. At least either important, these technologies, such as AI, must follow predefined ethical rules. To define a corresponding ethical framework, firstly it needs a common understanding on what AI means. Today there are several definitions of AI, like the very first one of John McCarthy (1956) “Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.” In line with other companies and main players in the field of AI we at DT think of AI as the imitation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. These processes include learning, reasoning, and self correction. After several decades, Artificial Intelligence has become one of the most intriguing topics of today – and the future. It has become widespread available and is discussed not only among experts but also more and more in public, politics, etc.. AI has started to influence business (new market opportunities as well as efficiency driver), society (e.g. broad discussion about autonomously driving vehicles or AI as “job machine” vs. “job killer”) and the life of each individual (AI already found its way into the living room, e.g. with voice steered digital assistants like smart speakers). But the use of AI and its possibilities confront us not only with fast developing technologies but as well as with the fact that our ethical roadmaps, based on human human interactions, might not be sufficient in this new era of technological influence. New questions arise and situations that were not imaginable in our daily lives then emerge. We as DT also want to develop and make use of AI. This technology can bring many benefits based on improving customer experience or simplicity. We are already in the game, e.g having several AI related projects running. With these comes an increase of digital responsibility on our side to ensure that AI is utilized in an ethical manner. So we as DT have to give answers to our customers, shareholders and stakeholders. The following Digital Ethics guidelines state how we as Deutsche Telekom want to build the future with AI. For us, technology serves one main purpose: It must act supportingly. Thus AI is in any case supposed to extend and complement human abilities rather than lessen them. Remark: The impact of AI on DT jobs – may it as a benefit and for value creation in the sense of job enrichment and enlargement or may it in the sense of efficiency is however not focus of these guidelines.

Published by Deutsche Telekom in Deutsche Telekom’s guidelines for artificial intelligence, May 11, 2018

(Preamble)

AI has arrived, and it is a technology that has the potential to change the world as we know it so far. It is technology that, with its development has the ability to generate an infinite amount of benefits and improve the quality of life of humanity. Similarly, AI opens the way to risky situations and raises questions about their use and their effects. At this point, it appears necessary to incorporate the ethical dimension to illuminate the development of AI, and make distinctions of its correct or incorrect use. At IA Latam, we collaboratively understand the creation of ethical criteria of self adherence that help us and guide all of us to follow the best possible path, always having as a north a better planet for the new generations. As the technologies advance, the ethical ramifications will be more relevant, where the conversation is no longer based on a "fulfill" but rather on a "we are doing the right thing and getting better". For this reason, in IA LATAM we present below our first Declaration of Ethical Principles for Latin American AI that we hope will be a starting point and a great help for all.

Published by IA Latam in Declaration Of Ethics For The Development And Use Of Artificial Intelligence (unofficial translation), Feb 8, 2019 (unconfirmed)

5. Human centric

AI systems should be designed with a clearly articulated public benefit that considers those who interact with the system and those who are affected by it. These groups should be meaningfully engaged throughout the system’s life cycle, to inform development and enhance operations. An approach to problem solving that embraces human centered design is strongly encouraged. Why it matters Clearly articulating a public benefit is an important step that enables meaningful dialogue early with affected groups and allows for measurement of success later. Placing the focus on those who interact with the system and those who are affected by it ensures that the outcomes do not cause adverse effects in the process of creating additional efficiencies. Developing algorithmic systems that incorporate human centred design will ensure better societal and economic outcomes from the data enhanced technologies.

Published by Government of Ontario, Canada in Principles for Ethical Use of AI [Beta], Sept 14, 2023