"Why do we do this?": Moral Stress and the Affective Experience of Ethics in Practice

Ethics tools create emotional burden, not just intellectual engagement: The study found that implementing ethics toolkits caused "emotional discomfort and feelings of vulnerability" among technical teams—an outcome that toolkit designers and the organization had not anticipated or prepared for, suggesting that responsible AI work involves affective challenges beyond rational deliberation.

Moral stress emerges when roles and responsibilities become unclear: The integration of ethics practices destabilized teams' existing boundaries around "responsibilities and decisions," creating what researchers call "moral stress"—a condition where practitioners feel caught between competing obligations without clear guidance on how to resolve them.

Current organizational structures are unprepared to support ethics implementation: Even in a "best case scenario" with a major city organization and dedicated ethics toolkit, "organisational structures were not able to deal with moral stress" that resulted from responsible technology practices, indicating systemic gaps in how institutions support ethical work.

The gap between ethics principles and practice may be partly emotional, not just procedural: While many interventions focus on tools and checklists, this research suggests the real barrier to responsible AI adoption includes practitioners' unaddressed emotional experiences, meaning solutions need to account for psychological and organizational support alongside technical guidance.