Ethics in AI and Autonomous System Applications Design

Abstract

There seems to be no end to the development of principles and guidelines in the artificial intelligence/autonomous systems (AI/AS) discipline. Institutes, corporations, governments, each with their imperatives, are rushing to make claims about their practices. In fact, what we have today is a plethora of idealistic design principles that draw from the domain of ethics, that at times the very organizations and agencies that created them struggle to put into practice. This editorial provides examples of AI/AS applications and service offerings, examining the potential for embedding ethics in the design process to minimize end-user vulnerability.