Towards an "Ethics by Design" Methodology for AI Research Projects

ABSTRACT

Addressing ethical issues arising from AI research, and by extension from most areas of Data Science, is a core challenge in both the academic and industry worlds. The nature of research and the specific set of technical skills involved imply that AI and Data Science researchers are not equipped to identify and anticipate such issues arising, or to establish solutions at the time a specific research project is being designed. In this paper, we discuss the need for a methodology for ethical research design that involves a broader set of skills from the start of the project. We specifically identify, from the relevant literature, a set of requirements that we argue to be needed for such a methodology. We then explore two case studies where such ethical considerations have been explored in conjunction with the development of specific research projects, in order to validate those assumptions and generalise them into a set of principles guiding an "Ethics by Design" method for conducting AI and Data Science research.

References

1. N. Backus and C. Ferraris. 2004. Theory meets practice: Using the potter box to teach business communication ethics. Association for Business Communication (2004), 222--229.
2. J. Bleecker. 2009. Design Fiction: A short essay on design, science, fact and fiction. report from the Near Future Laboratory.
3. A. Cavoukian. 2010. Privacy by design: The 7 foundational principles. implementation and mapping of fair information practices. Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada (2010).
4. J. Eakin, A. Robertson, B. Poland, D. Coburn, and R. & Edwards. 1996. Towards a critical social science perspective on health promotion research. Health promotion international , Vol. 11, 2 (1996), 157--165.
5. E. J. Emanuel, C. C. Grady, R. A. Crouch, R. K. Lie, F. G. Miller, and D. D. Wendler (Eds.). 2008. The Oxford textbook of clinical research ethic .Oxford University Press.
6. B. Friedman and P. H. Kahn Jr. 2007. Human values, ethics, and design. In The human-computer interaction handbook. 1223--1248.
7. M. Guillemin and L. Gillam. 2004. Ethics, reflexivity, and “ethically important moments” in research. Qualitative inquiry , Vol. 2, 10 (2004), 261--280.
8. S. Gürses, C. Troncoso, and C. Diaz. 2011. Engineering privacy by design. Computers, Privacy & Data Protection (2011).
9. H. Herzogenrath-Amelung, P. Troullinou, and N. Thomopoulos. 2015. Reversing the order: towards a philosophically informed debate on ICT for transport. ICT for Transport: Opportunities and Threats 205 (2015).
10. Wall J., Izquierdo E., Argyriou L., Monaghan D.S., O'Connor N.E., Poulakos S., Smolic A., and Mekuria R. 2014. REVERIE: Natural human interaction in virtual immersive environments. In IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP). 2165--2167.
11. M. Leese. 2017. Holding the Project Accountable: Research Governance, Ethics, and Democracy. Science and engineering ethics , Vol. 6, 23 (2017), 1597--1616.
12. E. Luger and T. Rodden. 2013. An informed view on consent for UbiComp. In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM international joint conference on Pervasive and ubiquitous computing .
13. J. Millar. 2015. Technology as moral proxy: Autonomy and paternalism by design. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine , Vol. 2, 34 (2015).
14. F. Ó Brolcháin, T. Jacquemard, D.S. Monaghan, N.E. O'Connor, P. Novitzky, and B. Gordijn. 2016. The convergence of virtual reality and social networks: threats to privacy and autonomy. Science and Engineering Ethics , Vol. 2, 22 (2016), 1--29.
15. S. Panchanathan, S Chakraborty, T. McDaniel, R. Tadayon, B. Fakhri, N. E. O'Connor, M. Marsden, S. Little, K. McGuinness, and D. Monaghan. 2017. Enriching the fan experience in a smart stadium using internet of things technologies. International Journal of Semantic Computing , Vol. 2, 11 (2017).
16. M. Sanjari, F. Bahramnezhad, F. K. Fomani, M. Shoghi, and M. A. Cheraghi. 2014. Ethical challenges of researchers in qualitative studies: the necessity to develop a specific guideline. Journal of medical ethics and history of medicine 7 (2014).
17. P. Troullinou and M. d'Aquin. 2018. Seeing the “Surveillant Face” of Technology in Black Mirror: Using Futuristic Scenarios for an Interdisciplinary Discussion on the Feasibility and Implications of Technology. In Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory, A. M. Cirucci and B. Vacker (Eds.). Lexington Books.
18. P. Troullinou, I. Tiddi, and M. d'Aquin (Eds.). 2017. Proceedings of the Re-coding Black Mirror 2017 Workshop co-located with 16th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2017) . CEUR-WS proceedings, http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1939/.
19. J. van Rest, D. Boonstra, M. Everts, M. van Rijn, and R. van Paassen. 2012. Designing privacy-by-design. In Annual Privacy Forum .
20. A. Van Wynsberghe and S. Robbins. 2013. Ethicist as Designer: a pragmatic approach to ethics in the lab. Science and engineering ethics , Vol. 4, 20 (2013), 947--961.
21. P. P. Verbeek. 2006. Materializing morality: Design ethics and technological mediation. Science, Technology, & Human Values , Vol. 3, 31 (2006), 361--380.
22. L.D. Watley. 2014. Training in ethical judgment with a modified Potter Box. Business Ethics: A European Review , Vol. 1, 23 (2014), 1--14.
23. D. Wright and P. De Hert. 2012. Introduction to privacy impact assessment. In Privacy Impact Assessment . Springer Netherlands.

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics