AI Ethics in Practice: Designing for Ecosystems

Speaker: Prof. Nitin Sawhney, Aalto University

AI Ethics in Practice: Designing for Ecosystems. Lecture led by Prof. Nitin Sawhney, Aalto University (PDF slides)

In the 2nd AI Ethics session on August 5th, Prof. Nitin Sawhney discusses ways for engaging AI principles in practice and designing for ecosystems and platforms. This session builds on the first lecture on Ethics & Politics of AI in Society and is followed by the final session discussing Decolonizing AI & Rethinking Resistance.

The key learning goals for this session include:

1. Understanding Ethics of Smart Cities and Data-Driven Urbanism in Crises
2. Recognizing Rights and Values of human, AI and non-human stakeholders
3. Applying Ethics in Practice for Designing Cooperative Urban AI Ecosystems

Key concepts of Ethics and Politics of AI discussed in session 1 are brought up to remind participants about how to enact these principles in practice. Prof. Nitin describes the recently devised EU Framework for Trustworthy AI and the key requirements that need to be continuously evaluated.

To constructively enact ethical AI principles, Prof. Sawhney proposes five key facets for an action agenda, showcased through real-world examples and case studies:

1. Engaging AI Ethics in your own Institution
2. Establishing AI Ethics Councils for Oversight & Governance
3. Creating Initiatives for Diversity, Inclusion & Expanded Participation in AI
4. Expanding Awareness, Open Education & Position in AI & Ethics
5. Participatory, Value-Sensitive & Speculative Design for AI

Lastly, participants engage in an exercise of mapping AI ethics & designing for ecosystems using a Data Ethics Canvas proposed for responsible AI in cities.

We suggest some readings and resources to familiarize yourself with the topic:

Nitin Sawhney. 2020. Te Awa Tupua: Sacred Rivers and Cooperative Urban AI Ecosystems. Workshop on Urban AI: Formulating an Agenda for the Interdisciplinary Research of Artificial Intelligence in Cities, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2020), July 6-20, 2020, Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Rob Kitchin. 2016. The Ethics of Smart Cities and Urban Science. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 374: 20160115. 

Optional Resource:

Gender Shades project by Joy Buolamwini (video & interactive website), 2018.

Further Reading on Decolonizing AI:

Shakir Mohamed, Marie-Therese Png and William Isaac. 2020. Decolonial AI: Decolonial Theory as Sociotechnical Foresight in Artificial Intelligence. Philosophy and Technology (405).

More readings and resources can be accessed here.

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