IEEE Initiative on Ethical Design Is Making Headway - AI Trends

A three-year effort by hundreds of engineers worldwide resulted in the publication in March of 2019 of Ethically Aligned Design (EAD) for Business, a guide for policymakers, engineers, designers, developers and corporations. The effort was headed by the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (A/IS), with John C. Havens as Executive Director, who spoke to AI Trends for an Executive Interview. We recently connected to ask how the effort has been going. EAD First Edition, a 290-page document which Havens refers to as "applied ethics," has seen some uptake, for example by IBM, which referred to the IEEE effort within their own resource called Everyday Ethics for AI The IBM document is 26 pages, easy to digest, structured into five areas of focus, each with recommended action steps and an example. The example for Accountability involved an AI team developing applications for a hotel.