· 9. Safety

Safety is about ensuring that the system will indeed do what it is supposed to do, without harming users (human physical integrity), resources or the environment. It includes minimizing unintended consequences and errors in the operation of the system. Processes to clarify and assess potential risks associated with the use of AI products and services should be put in place. Moreover, formal mechanisms are needed to measure and guide the adaptability of AI systems.
Principle: Draft Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, Dec 18, 2018

Published by The European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence

Related Principles

1. Transparency and Explainability

Transparency refers to providing disclosure on when an AI system is being used and the involvement of an AI system in decision making, what kind of data it uses, and its purpose. By disclosing to individuals that AI is used in the system, individuals will become aware and can make an informed choice of whether to use the AIenabled system. Explainability is the ability to communicate the reasoning behind an AI system’s decision in a way that is understandable to a range of people, as it is not always clear how an AI system has arrived at a conclusion. This allows individuals to know the factors contributing to the AI system’s recommendation. In order to build public trust in AI, it is important to ensure that users are aware of the use of AI technology and understand how information from their interaction is used and how the AI system makes its decisions using the information provided. In line with the principle of transparency, deployers have a responsibility to clearly disclose the implementation of an AI system to stakeholders and foster general awareness of the AI system being used. With the increasing use of AI in many businesses and industries, the public is becoming more aware and interested in knowing when they are interacting with AI systems. Knowing when and how AI systems interact with users is also important in helping users discern the potential harm of interacting with an AI system that is not behaving as intended. In the past, AI algorithms have been found to discriminate against female job applicants and have failed to accurately recognise the faces of dark skinned women. It is important for users to be aware of the expected behaviour of the AI systems so they can make more informed decisions about the potential harm of interacting with AI systems. An example of transparency in an AI enabled ecommerce platform is informing users that their purchase history is used by the platform’s recommendation algorithm to identify similar products and display them on the users’ feeds. In line with the principle of explainability, developers and deployers designing, developing, and deploying AI systems should also strive to foster general understanding among users of how such systems work with simple and easy to understand explanations on how the AI system makes decisions. Understanding how AI systems work will help humans know when to trust its decisions. Explanations can have varying degrees of complexity, ranging from a simple text explanation of which factors more significantly affected the decisionmaking process to displaying a heatmap over the relevant text or on the area of an image that led to the system’s decision. For example, when an AI system is used to predict the likelihood of cardiac arrest in patients, explainability can be implemented by informing medical professionals of the most significant factors (e.g., age, blood pressure, etc.) that influenced the AI system’s decision so that they can subsequently make informed decisions on their own. Where “black box” models are deployed, rendering it difficult, if not impossible to provide explanations as to the workings of the AI system, outcome based explanations, with a focus on explaining the impact of decisionmaking or results flowing from the AI system may be relied on. Alternatively, deployers may also consider focusing on aspects relating to the quality of the AI system or preparing information that could build user confidence in the outcomes of an AI system’s processing behaviour. Some of these measures are: • Documenting the repeatability of results produced by the AI system. Some practices to demonstrate repeatability include conducting repeatability assessments to ensure deployments in live environments are repeatable and performing counterfactual fairness testing to ensure that the AI system’s decisions are the same in both the real world and in the counterfactual world. Repeatability refers to the ability of the system to consistently obtain the same results, given the same scenario. Repeatability often applies within the same environment, with the same data and the same computational conditions. • Ensuring traceability by building an audit trail to document the AI system development and decisionmaking process, implementing a black box recorder that captures all input data streams, or storing data appropriately to avoid degradation and alteration. • Facilitating auditability by keeping a comprehensive record of data provenance, procurement, preprocessing, lineage, storage, and security. Such information can also be centralised digitally in a process log to increase capacity to cater the presentation of results to different tiers of stakeholders with different interests and levels of expertise. Deployers should, however, note that auditability does not necessarily entail making certain confidential information about business models or intellectual property related to the AI system publicly available. A risk based approach can be taken towards identifying the subset of AI enabled features in the AI system for which implemented auditability is necessary to align with regulatory requirements or industry practices. • Using AI Model Cards, which are short documents accompanying trained machine learning models that disclose the context in which models are intended to be used, details of the performance evaluation procedures, and other relevant information. In cases where AI systems are procured directly from developers, deployers will have to work together with these developers to achieve transparency. More on this will be covered in later sections of the Guide.

Published by ASEAN in ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics, 2021

3. Safe

Data enhanced technologies like AI and ML systems must function in a safe and secure way throughout their life cycles and potential risks should be continually assessed and managed. Designers, policy makers and developers should embed appropriate safeguards throughout the life cycle of the system to ensure it is working as intended. This would include mechanisms related to system testing, piloting, scaling and human intervention as well as alternative processes in case a complete halt of system operations is required. The mechanisms must be appropriate to the context and determined before deployment but should be iterated upon throughout the system’s life cycle. Why it matters Automated algorithmic decisions can reflect and amplify undesirable patterns in the data they are trained on. As well, issues with the system can arise that only become apparent after the system is deployed. Therefore, despite our best efforts unexpected outcomes and impacts need to be considered. Accordingly, systems will require ongoing monitoring and mitigation planning to ensure that if the algorithmic system is making decisions that are not intended, a human can adapt, correct or improve the system.

Published by Government of Ontario, Canada in Principles for Ethical Use of AI [Beta], Sept 14, 2023

Principle 5 – Reliability & Safety

The reliability and safety principle ensures that the AI system adheres to the set specifications and that the AI system behaves exactly as its designers intended and anticipated. Reliability is a measure of consistency and provides confidence in how robust a system is. It is a measure of dependability with which it operationally conforms to its intended functionality and the outcomes it produces. On the other hand, safety is a measure of how the AI system does not pose a risk of harm or danger to society and individuals. As an illustration, AI systems such as autonomous vehicles can pose a risk to people’s lives if living organisms are not properly recognized, certain scenarios are not trained for or if the system malfunctions. A reliable working system should be safe by not posing a danger to society and should have built in mechanisms to prevent harm. The risk mitigation framework is closely related to this principle. Potential risks and unintended harms should be minimized in this aspect. The predictive model should be monitored and controlled in a periodic and continuous manner to check if its operations and functionality are aligned with the designed structure and frameworks in place. The AI system should be technically sound, robust, and developed to prevent malicious usage to exploit its data and outcomes to harm entities, individuals or communities. A continuous implementation continuous development approach is essential to ensure reliability.

Published by SDAIA in AI Ethics Principles, Sept 14, 2022

· Transparency and explainability

37. The transparency and explainability of AI systems are often essential preconditions to ensure the respect, protection and promotion of human rights, fundamental freedoms and ethical principles. Transparency is necessary for relevant national and international liability regimes to work effectively. A lack of transparency could also undermine the possibility of effectively challenging decisions based on outcomes produced by AI systems and may thereby infringe the right to a fair trial and effective remedy, and limits the areas in which these systems can be legally used. 38. While efforts need to be made to increase transparency and explainability of AI systems, including those with extra territorial impact, throughout their life cycle to support democratic governance, the level of transparency and explainability should always be appropriate to the context and impact, as there may be a need to balance between transparency and explainability and other principles such as privacy, safety and security. People should be fully informed when a decision is informed by or is made on the basis of AI algorithms, including when it affects their safety or human rights, and in those circumstances should have the opportunity to request explanatory information from the relevant AI actor or public sector institutions. In addition, individuals should be able to access the reasons for a decision affecting their rights and freedoms, and have the option of making submissions to a designated staff member of the private sector company or public sector institution able to review and correct the decision. AI actors should inform users when a product or service is provided directly or with the assistance of AI systems in a proper and timely manner. 39. From a socio technical lens, greater transparency contributes to more peaceful, just, democratic and inclusive societies. It allows for public scrutiny that can decrease corruption and discrimination, and can also help detect and prevent negative impacts on human rights. Transparency aims at providing appropriate information to the respective addressees to enable their understanding and foster trust. Specific to the AI system, transparency can enable people to understand how each stage of an AI system is put in place, appropriate to the context and sensitivity of the AI system. It may also include insight into factors that affect a specific prediction or decision, and whether or not appropriate assurances (such as safety or fairness measures) are in place. In cases of serious threats of adverse human rights impacts, transparency may also require the sharing of code or datasets. 40. Explainability refers to making intelligible and providing insight into the outcome of AI systems. The explainability of AI systems also refers to the understandability of the input, output and the functioning of each algorithmic building block and how it contributes to the outcome of the systems. Thus, explainability is closely related to transparency, as outcomes and ub processes leading to outcomes should aim to be understandable and traceable, appropriate to the context. AI actors should commit to ensuring that the algorithms developed are explainable. In the case of AI applications that impact the end user in a way that is not temporary, easily reversible or otherwise low risk, it should be ensured that the meaningful explanation is provided with any decision that resulted in the action taken in order for the outcome to be considered transparent. 41. Transparency and explainability relate closely to adequate responsibility and accountability measures, as well as to the trustworthiness of AI systems.

Published by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in The Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Nov 24, 2021

6 Promote artificial intelligence that is responsive and sustainable

Responsiveness requires that designers, developers and users continuously, systematically and transparently examine an AI technology to determine whether it is responding adequately, appropriately and according to communicated expectations and requirements in the context in which it is used. Thus, identification of a health need requires that institutions and governments respond to that need and its context with appropriate technologies with the aim of achieving the public interest in health protection and promotion. When an AI technology is ineffective or engenders dissatisfaction, the duty to be responsive requires an institutional process to resolve the problem, which may include terminating use of the technology. Responsiveness also requires that AI technologies be consistent with wider efforts to promote health systems and environmental and workplace sustainability. AI technologies should be introduced only if they can be fully integrated and sustained in the health care system. Too often, especially in under resourced health systems, new technologies are not used or are not repaired or updated, thereby wasting scare resources that could have been invested in proven interventions. Furthermore, AI systems should be designed to minimize their ecological footprints and increase energy efficiency, so that use of AI is consistent with society’s efforts to reduce the impact of human beings on the earth’s environment, ecosystems and climate. Sustainability also requires governments and companies to address anticipated disruptions to the workplace, including training of health care workers to adapt to use of AI and potential job losses due to the use of automated systems for routine health care functions and administrative tasks.

Published by World Health Organization (WHO) in Key ethical principles for use of artificial intelligence for health, Jun 28, 2021