Exploring Intercultural Values in Relation to Global AI Ethics and Governance.

• In Event: STS Engagements with civil society and social justice activism: case studies of collective experiences

Abstract

In recent years, the centre of gravity of debates about the ethics and governance of AI has shifted from the level of nation-states to international fora. The European Commission recently published its Draft AI Regulation, proposing a risk-based approach, while the Council of Europe is exploring an international legal framework to ensure that the design, development, and deployment of AI systems accord with human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. In November 2021, UNESCO published the first global ethics framework, which was subsequently adopted by all 193 member states.

These developments reflect both the global scale of AI and related data-intensive technologies and infrastructures, and widespread concerns about current and potential future harms based on how they are being implemented by corporations and governments. But how successful are such global frameworks in forging an approach to ethics and governance that is both informed by and acceptable across vastly differing cultural contexts, achieving what Ess (2006) terms “pros hen ethical pluralism”? And how well do they address the aims of social justice across both the Global North and South?

This paper presents results from a series of workshops conducted as part of the Alan Turing Institute’s PATH-AI project (“Privacy, Agency, and Trust in Human-AI ecosystems”), which brought together thirty stakeholders from social justice oriented digital rights organisations from more than twenty countries. The workshops explored intercultural ethical concerns relating to inequity, discrimination, and disempowerment, and the extent to which these were addressed by UNESCO’s Recommendations on the Ethics of AI.

Author

• James Wright, The Alan Turing Institute