Cited by 229Ethics and Social Impacts of AIExplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)Digitalization, Law, and Regulation

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 70 of the 70 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 81 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Ethical principles in machine learning and artificial intelligence: cases from the field and possible ways forward

Open access
Lo Piano, Samuele·2020·Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Abstract

Decision-making on numerous aspects of our daily lives is being outsourced to machine-learning (ML) algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), motivated by speed and efficiency in the decision process. ML approaches—one of the typologies of algorithms underpinning artificial intelligence—are typically developed as black boxes. The implication is that ML code scripts are rarely scrutinised; interpretability is usually sacrificed in favour of usability and effectiveness. Room for improvement in practices associated with programme development have also been flagged along other dimensions, including inter alia fairness, accuracy, accountability, and transparency. In this contribution, the production of guidelines and dedicated documents around these themes is discussed. The following applications of AI-driven decision-making are outlined: (a) risk assessment in the criminal justice system, and (b) autonomous vehicles, highlighting points of friction across ethical principles. Possible ways forward towards the implementation of governance on AI are finally examined.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

The paper reviews ethical principles in machine learning and AI, maps the proliferation of guideline documents, and examines two applied cases—criminal justice recidivism-risk assessment and autonomous vehicles—to show trade-offs among fairness, accuracy, transparency, accountability, and privacy. It argues that AI ethics remains nascent, guidelines are mostly voluntary, and governance should include scrutiny tools, stakeholder inclusion, and possibly super partes standards.

Key findings

  • Guideline production has skyrocketed since 2016; Floridi and Cowls identified 47 principles mapping onto five dimensions (beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, explicability), while Jobin et al. reviewed 84 documents and classified values around transparency, justice and fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility, and privacy.
  • In the COMPAS case, an investigative report examined a pool of cases with recidivism scores for >18,000 criminal defendants in Broward County, Florida and flagged potential racial bias; the company refused to disclose full proprietary code, and while about 140 variables exist, only core variables were disclosed, with race not among them. Interpretable alternatives reportedly achieved similar accuracy using only two variables—age and total number of previous convictions.
  • Autonomous vehicles pose continuous decisions and a “statistical trolley dilemma”; reported failures include inability to perceive a pedestrian as such and acceleration when braking was required due to conflicting instructions from different algorithms, with millions of lines of code making causality practically impossible to scrutinise.
  • The paper highlights points of friction across ethical dimensions, including transparency versus accountability/privacy/property, fairness versus accuracy, group versus individual fairness, and ex-ante assumptions versus ex-post consequences.

Methods

  • Conceptual/review paper: it discusses the production of AI ethics guidelines and secondary literature, then examines two applied cases—recidivism-risk assessment in the criminal justice system and autonomous vehicles.
  • Draws on cited secondary literature and reports, including Floridi and Cowls, Jobin et al., COMPAS/ProPublica, and the MIT Moral Machine; no primary empirical data collection or systematic review protocol is stated.
  • Main analysis is a narrative synthesis of ethical dimensions, trade-offs, and possible governance ways forward, such as global sensitivity analysis, NUSAP, sensitivity auditing, extended peer communities, and a super partes authority for standards.

Limitations

  • The paper states that AI ethics is at its infancy and that the development process of algorithms cannot be perfect; one must be open to negotiation and work with imperfections and clumsiness.
  • It notes that guidelines are largely voluntary with no sanctionary scheme for non-compliance, accountability is mainly theoretical, transparency may not suffice, and proprietary code is often undisclosed.
  • Evident from the text: there is no formal limitations section; the work is a narrative synthesis with two selected case studies, not a systematic review or empirical evaluation.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1057/s41599-020-0501-9

Cites

70 of 70 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

76 Not checked yet · 45 Own interpretation · 6 No basis given

Verify all 81 references — free account

Show all 44 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 72
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 28
83 of 83
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Decision-making on numerous aspects of daily lives is being outsourced to ML algorithms and AI, motivated by speed and efficiency in the decision process.

    “Decision-making on numerous aspects of our daily lives is being outsourced to machinelearning (ML) algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), motivated by speed and efficiency in the decision process.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    ML approaches are typically developed as black boxes, so their code scripts are rarely scrutinised and interpretability is usually sacrificed in favour of usability and effectiveness.

    “ML approaches-one of the typologies of algorithms underpinning artificial intelligence-are typically developed as black boxes.The implication is that ML code scripts are rarely scrutinised; interpretability is usually sacrificed in favour of usability and effectiveness.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Room for improvement in practices associated with programme development has been flagged along dimensions including fairness, accuracy, accountability, and transparency.

    “Room for improvement in practices associated with programme development have also been flagged along other dimensions, including inter alia fairness, accuracy, accountability, and transparency.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Developers of algorithms may not be capable of explaining in plain language how a given tool works and what functional elements it is based on.

    “Moreover, developers of algorithm may not be capable of explaining in plain language how a given tool works and what functional elements it is based on.”
4 of 4

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

3 of 3

Citations

Cites

Show all 69 references

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Funtowicz S, Ravetz J (1997) Environmental problems, post-normal science, and extended peer communities. Études et Recherches sur les Systémes Agraires et le Développement. INRA Editions. pp. 169–175
  2. McCarthy J, Minsky ML, Rochester N, Shannon CE (2006) A proposal for the dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence, August 31, 1955. AI Mag 27:12–12

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Metadata

Authors
Lo Piano, S.
Venue
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Published
2020-06-17
Volume
7
Issue
1
ISSN
  • 2055-1045 (ISSN-L)
  • 2662-9992
OpenAlex
W3029725182
Cited by
229
References
69
Citations by year
2026: 18 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 44 · 2023: 45 · 2022: 36 · 2021: 40 · 2020: 7
FWCI
43.61
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • CentAUR (University of Reading) (submittedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
Universitetet i Bergen
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
  • Social Sciences › Law › Digitalization, Law, and Regulation
Keywords
ethical principles, machine learning, artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision-making, black-box algorithms, interpretability, algorithmic fairness, accountability, transparency, AI governance, autonomous vehicles, AI guidelines

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