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Implementing AI Ethics in Practice: An Empirical Evaluation of the RESOLVEDD Strategy
Ville Vakkuri, Kai-Kristian Kemell
April 21, 2020
International Conference on Software Business
28 citations
1 influential
Key Takeaways
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Structured ethics methods can work even without enthusiastic buy-in: The study found that requiring developers to use the RESOLVEDD strategy led to more ethical considerations in AI projects, even when participants weren't intrinsically motivated to use it. This suggests that implementing ethics frameworks as design requirements can be effective regardless of initial resistance.
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Few practical tools exist for implementing AI ethics: The paper highlights a significant gap between calls for ethical AI and the availability of actual methods and tools to implement ethics in practice, indicating that the field needs more concrete, usable approaches for developers.
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Responsibility increased through structured ethical processes: When developers used the RESOLVEDD strategy, they demonstrated greater responsibility in their work, suggesting that having a formal ethical decision-making process can meaningfully change how developers approach AI system design.
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Empirical evidence on AI ethics implementation is scarce: The authors note that while many scholars and the public advocate for ethical AI, there are "few empirical studies on the topic," meaning we lack real-world data on what actually works to make AI systems more ethical—this study helps fill that gap.
Abstract
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems exert a growing influence on society, real-life incidents begin to underline the importance of AI Ethics. Though calls for more ethical AI systems have been voiced by scholars and the general public alike, few empirical studies on the topic exist. Similarly, few tools and methods designed for implementing AI ethics into practice currently exist. To provide empirical data into this on-going discussion, we empirically evaluate an existing method from the field of business ethics, the RESOLVEDD strategy, in the context of ethical system development. We evaluated RESOLVEDD by means of a multiple case study of five student projects where its use was given as one of the design requirements for the projects. One of our key findings is that, even though the use of the ethical method was forced upon the participants, its utilization nonetheless facilitated of ethical consideration in the projects. Specifically, it resulted in the developers displaying more responsibility, even though the use of the tool did not stem from intrinsic motivation.