Leveraging Professional Ethics for Responsible AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is proliferating throughout society, but so too are calls for practicing Responsible AI.4 The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct states computing professionals should contribute to society and human well-being (General Ethical Principle 1.1), but it can be difficult for a computer scientist to judge the impacts of a particular application in all fields. AI is influencing a range of social domains from law and medicine to journalism, government, and education. Technologists do not just need to make the technology work and scale it up, they must make it work while also being responsible for a host of societal, ethical, legal, and other human-centered concerns in these domains.11 There is no shortcut to becoming an expert social scientist, ethicist, or legal scholar.