Signs for Ethical AI: A Route Towards Transparency

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently raised to the point where it has a direct impact on the daily life of billions of people. This is the result of its application to sectors like finance, health, digital entertainment, transportation, security and advertisement. Today, AI fuels some of the most significant economic and research institutions in the world, and the impact of AI in the near future seems difficult to predict or even bound. In contrast to all this power, society remains mostly ignorant of the capabilities, requirements and standard practices of AI today. Society is becoming aware of the dangers that come with that ignorance, and is rightfully asking for solutions. To address this need, improving on current practices of interaction between people and AI systems, we propose a transparency scheme to be implemented on any AI system open to the public. The scheme is based on two main pillars: Data Privacy and AI Transparency. The first recognizes the relevance of data for AI and is supported by GDPR, the most important legislation on the topic. The second considers aspects of AI transparency yet to be regulated: AI capacity, purpose and source. Lacking legislation to build upon, we design this pillar based on fundamental ethical principles. For each of the two pillars, we define a three-level display. The first level is based on visual signs, inspired by traffic signs managing the interaction between people and cars, and designed for quick and universal interpretability. The second level uses a factsheet system, providing further detail while still abstracting the subject. The last level provides access to all available details. After detailing and exemplifying the proposed transparency scheme, we define a set of principles for creating transparent by design software, to be used during the integration of AI components on user-oriented services.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl