How can design nudges ethical principles into innovative practices to create more sustainable and responsible AI products/services?
Abstract
In the past couple of years, artificial intelligence(AI) has done wonders in almost every field of life. AI has resulted in economic growth, social development, and the overall betterment of human lives. However, AI-based technology also poses substantial dangers for society due to data security, privacy issues, and other ethical problems. With the increased use of artificial intelligence, the ethical concerns attached to it are increasingly being highlighted not only in academic literature but in mainstream media as well. Artificial Intelligence professionals as well as the government and international groups are focused on devising ethical standards and guidelines for the development and use of AI. Some experts are steadfast that sustainability is the core of AI ethics in the coming Industry 5.0 (van Wynsberghe, 2021; EC, 2021; Fraga-Lamas et al., 2021)
Sustainable AI can be categorized into two: AI for sustainability aims to explore the application of AI as an enabler to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; Sustainability of AI, deals with the sustainable production of AI/ML itself (van Wynsberghe, 2021). Integrating the techniques of both qualitative and quantitative research, four months of literature statistics and extensive analysis of 2000 publications were carried out to investigate the gap between design and sustainable technology, I believe the Sustainability of AI is under-researched, and propose both of two branches should be included in this Sustainable AI research.
An in-depth literature review has also been conducted in exploring the challenges to AI ethics, the role of design in AI practice, and the behaviors of intelligent applications. The biggest challenge to AI ethics is the gap between theory and practice. There are three primary reasons which have fostered this gap: 1) the abstract nature of principles, 2) the lack of inclusivity in the interpretation of the ethical principles, and 3) the absence of any particular framework or tools that could make the translation of theoretical principles and practical standards. In terms of the role of design, most traditional design methods have failed to bring sustainable innovation to AI.
The comprehensive analysis of the literature has helped in defining the aim and objectives of the current study. The primary goal of this research study is to inquire about the ways design nudges ethical principles into innovative practice to create more sustainable and responsible AI products/services. It intends to bridge the gap that exists between theory and practice within the AI ethics field. The motivation of this research is to explore the role of design in aligning ethical principles with practices to not only facilitate AI innovation but also to update design knowledge to adapt to the coming era of Industry 5.0. In order to achieve its objective, the research formulates a theoretical framework revolving around four elements including design, technology, ethics, and practices. Each element is investigated individually and with reference to its relation with the other three elements in order to find a correlation.
The research study does have some limitations as well. The focus has kept on Narrow AI with limited discussion on General AI. More emphasis is on Sustainable AI ethics than AI ethics in general. Also, the research will mainly be investigated in the context of health informatics technology study, which might link to some specific topics such as data preservation and management, epidemic tracking and visualizing applications, and cyberinfrastructure ecosystem under AI-powered applications. Research through Design (RtD) would be the primary method to conduct this research.
Key Words: #data study, AI ethics, Critical Design, #health, #sustainability
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