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

Principle 4 – Social & Environmental Benefits

The social and environmental benefit principle embraces the beneficial and positive impact of social and environmental priorities that should benefit individuals and the wider community that focus on sustainable goals and objectives. AI systems should neither cause nor accelerate harm or otherwise adversely affect human beings but rather contribute to empowering and complementing social and environmental progress while addressing associated social and environmental ills. This entails the protection of social good as well as environmental sustainability.

Principle: AI Ethics Principles, Sept 14, 2022

Published by SDAIA

Related Principles

Human, social and environmental wellbeing

Throughout their lifecycle, AI systems should benefit individuals, society and the environment. This principle aims to clearly indicate from the outset that AI systems should be used for beneficial outcomes for individuals, society and the environment. AI system objectives should be clearly identified and justified. AI systems that help address areas of global concern should be encouraged, like the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Ideally, AI systems should be used to benefit all human beings, including future generations. AI systems designed for legitimate internal business purposes, like increasing efficiency, can have broader impacts on individual, social and environmental wellbeing. Those impacts, both positive and negative, should be accounted for throughout the AI system's lifecycle, including impacts outside the organisation.

Published by Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, Australian Government in AI Ethics Principles, Nov 7, 2019

· 1. The Principle of Beneficence: “Do Good”

AI systems should be designed and developed to improve individual and collective wellbeing. AI systems can do so by generating prosperity, value creation and wealth maximization and sustainability. At the same time, beneficent AI systems can contribute to wellbeing by seeking achievement of a fair, inclusive and peaceful society, by helping to increase citizen’s mental autonomy, with equal distribution of economic, social and political opportunity. AI systems can be a force for collective good when deployed towards objectives like: the protection of democratic process and rule of law; the provision of common goods and services at low cost and high quality; data literacy and representativeness; damage mitigation and trust optimization towards users; achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals or sustainability understood more broadly, according to the pillars of economic development, social equity, and environmental protection. In other words, AI can be a tool to bring more good into the world and or to help with the world’s greatest challenges.

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

· Build and Validate:

1 The models and algorithms must have, as their ultimate goal, a result linked to a socially recognized end, with the ability to demonstrate how the expected results relate to that social or environmental purpose through transformative and impactful benefits where applicable. 2 It is best practice to measure and maintain acceptable levels of resource usage and energy consumption during this phase setting the tone that AI systems not only strive to foster AI solutions that address global concerns relating to social and environmental issues but also practice sustainable and ecological responsibilities.

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

Sustainability

Any use of AI should aim to promote environmental, economic and social sustainability. To this end, the human, social, cultural, political, economic and environmental impacts of AI technologies should continuously be assessed and appropriate mitigation and or prevention measures should be taken to address adverse impacts, including on future generations.

Published by United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination in Principles for the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence in the United Nations System, Sept 20, 2022

· Sustainability

31. The development of sustainable societies relies on the achievement of a complex set of objectives on a continuum of human, social, cultural, economic and environmental dimensions. The advent of AI technologies can either benefit sustainability objectives or hinder their realization, depending on how they are applied across countries with varying levels of development. The continuous assessment of the human, social, cultural, economic and environmental impact of AI technologies should therefore be carried out with full cognizance of the implications of AI technologies for sustainability as a set of constantly evolving goals across a range of dimensions, such as currently identified in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

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