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AI Glossary

Ethics

AI Ethics is the application of moral principles that guide the responsible development, deployment, and use of artificial intelligence.

AI Ethics

Overview

Artificial intelligence can improve lives, increase productivity, and solve complex problems.

It can also create unintended consequences if it is developed or used irresponsibly.

This is where AI Ethics becomes important.

AI Ethics is the study and application of moral principles that guide the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence.

Rather than focusing only on what AI can do, AI ethics asks what AI should do.

Common ethical principles include:

  • Fairness
  • Transparency
  • Accountability
  • Privacy
  • Human oversight
  • Safety

A helpful way to think about AI ethics is professional ethics in medicine or law.

Doctors and lawyers follow ethical standards even when the law does not explicitly require them.

Organizations apply similar principles when developing responsible AI systems.

AI ethics works alongside Responsible AI, AI Governance, and AI Accountability to help organizations make responsible decisions.

Why It Matters

Ethical AI helps organizations build trust, reduce harm, improve decision-making, and develop AI systems that benefit people and society.

Real-World Example

A company discovers its hiring AI produces unfair outcomes for certain applicants.

Before deployment, the organization updates the model, improves its training data, and introduces human review to improve fairness.

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