WSIS Forum 2023: Ethics and AI for and with Society: Ethical Design

Are Ethics and AI really two sides of the same coin?
New technology developments which focus on integrating human-centred methods and rules into our use of AI, so that it is transparent, evidence-based and secure, will serve to increase trust in technology, assisting the process of changing Society and the world of work for governments and people everywhere in a way that favours human dignity at all levels of involvement, from workers to managers.

This workshop builds upon the results of research, development and innovation: the versatile and robust Eco-System Platform that gathers and protects tacit knowledge, as the key to developing structured multilingual intellectual capital and integrates Ethics-by-design alongside AI-by-design in view of the far reaching consequences involved, for good or ill [https://rdcu.be/cYVPg].

The core concerns of Ethical Governance and Diversity are common good, trustworthiness, fairness, social responsibility, reciprocity, confidentiality, privacy, judgement, accountability, transparency, biases, utility, diversity, and alignment. For example, the way different traditions perceive, understand and communicate ethics across cultures. Ethics is situated in different cultural contexts, there is no universal view of ethics, as it has impact on cultural practices of societies, and thus ethics has to be contextualised within cultures. There is no one unique way of thinking and doing ethics, therefore how can we understand and communicate ethics across cultures?

The core premise of Ethics of Reciprocity is that sociality is not something that can be a property of a machine, but is rather something that is enacted in an encounter, or an evolving relationship, between a human and a machine. Empathy is often thought of as a uniquely human trait that enables us to form connections with and understand one another. Should we thus focus on the enactment of empathic social agency, rather than its representation, in the design of social robots, as if it were an ethical machine?

Those who are engaged in the pursuit of machine ethics and governance are reminded that actionable ethics is also about the pursuit of inclusive participation and openness towards knowledge of the past, complexities of the present and uncertainties of the future. In the end, it is not important how the AI machine can be aligned with human values or visualising as how human values are fully aligned with the AI machine, converging to the post-human world, what it is important to know is that human values are diverse, social, cultural, and contextual, and they do not fit into the logic of the AI machine.

WSIS towards 2025: In an increasingly globalised culture, knowledge is arguably the most valuable good of humanity, but it is open both to use and misuse. It is the combination of ethics and the responsible use of AI, in all fields of science and in the world of work, which will make all the difference as we strive towards a more inclusive and just society on a global scale.