Design of an Ethical Toolkit for the Development of AI Applications

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most groundbreaking developments of the last half-century. More and more organizations are either implementing AI or considering its application to optimize their lines of business. At the same time, this exponential growth has also raised questions regarding its ethical implications and societal consequences. As many commercial intelligent applications are becoming ubiquitous, and some are getting implemented in higher levels of decision making, it is extremely important to consider the societal and ethical results of this “digital transformation” process. Organizations should understand where their AI comes from as well as whom they are helping or affecting when implementing it.

This situation opens a new window of opportunity for the development of ethical tools that assist companies in the responsible implementation of AI, as well as the current and future business opportunities that this represents. The current thesis explores the ethics of the development of AI applications and its implementation in MOBGEN | Accenture Interactive projects. By including an ethical perspective towards the application of this technology, the organization will improve its value proposition and prevent future unintended and harmful outcomes for the organization and their clients.

Accordingly, the current thesis focuses on understanding the ethical views and future concerns of all the stakeholders involved in the development of AI applications. This is done by following a double diamond design process, which simultaneously includes the execution of a couple of Action Research cycles to generate awareness on the topic inside the organization.

A detailed literature review, several in-depth interviews, and an intense empirical research effort are conducted to understand the current AI ethics context. This reveals a considerable large amount of insights, which are translated to ethical principles and, afterward, transformed into design principles. At the same time, these principles led to the creation of a theoretical framework intended to assist in the ethical evaluation of AI-related projects.

Based on this theoretical framework, a toolkit is designed to help the development teams of MOBGEN | Accenture Interactive with the ethical assessment of AI applications. The toolkit is designed in the form of a “full-day” workshop, which is composed by seven different modules distributed into two major strategic phases. These modules are designed to assist in the generation of ideas and support ethical dialogue creatively and collaboratively.

Finally, a total of six evaluation sessions with MOBGEN | Accenture Interactive and other external stakeholders validated the design toolkit, serving as the perfect preface to recommendations for further development. These recommendations include the development of ethical frameworks using design methods, measuring the ethical impact AI systems, and to enhance research on AI ethics from a design perspective.