1. Fair AI

We seek to ensure that the applications of AI technology lead to fair results. This means that they should not lead to discriminatory impacts on people in relation to race, ethnic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or any other personal condition. We will apply technology to minimize the likelihood that the training data sets we use create or reinforce unfair bias or discrimination. When optimizing a machine learning algorithm for accuracy in terms of false positives and negatives, we will consider the impact of the algorithm in the specific domain.
Principle: AI Principles of Telefónica, Oct 30, 2018

Published by Telefónica

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

· Fairness and inclusion

AI systems should make the same recommendations for everyone with similar characteristics or qualifications. Employers should be required to test AI in the workplace on a regular basis to ensure that the system is built for purpose and is not harmfully influenced by bias of any kind — gender, race, sexual orientation, age, religion, income, family status and so on. AI should adopt inclusive design efforts to anticipate any potential deployment issues that could unintentionally exclude people. Workplace AI should be tested to ensure that it does not discriminate against vulnerable individuals or communities. Governments should review the impact of workplace, governmental and social AI on the opportunities and rights of poor people, Indigenous peoples and vulnerable members of society. In particular, the impact of overlapping AI systems toward profiling and marginalization should be identified and countered.

Published by Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Canada in Toward a G20 Framework for Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Jul 19, 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

2. Transparent and explainable AI

We will be explicit about the kind of personal and or non personal data the AI systems uses as well as about the purpose the data is used for. When people directly interact with an AI system, we will be transparent to the users that this is the case. When AI systems take, or support, decisions we take the technical and organizational measures required to guarantee a level of understanding adequate to the application area. In any case, if the decisions significantly affect people's lives, we will ensure we understand the logic behind the conclusions. This will also apply when we use third party technology.

Published by Telefónica in AI Principles of Telefónica, Oct 30, 2018