Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International Conference on Software Business

ICSOB 2019: Software Business pp 260–275Cite as

Implementing AI Ethics in Practice: An Empirical Evaluation of the RESOLVEDD Strategy

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 370))

Abstract

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems exert a growing influence on society, real-life incidents begin to underline the importance of AI Ethics. Though calls for more ethical AI systems have been voiced by scholars and the general public alike, few empirical studies on the topic exist. Similarly, few tools and methods designed for implementing AI ethics into practice currently exist. To provide empirical data into this on-going discussion, we empirically evaluate an existing method from the field of business ethics, the RESOLVEDD strategy, in the context of ethical system development. We evaluated RESOLVEDD by means of a multiple case study of five student projects where its use was given as one of the design requirements for the projects. One of our key findings is that, even though the use of the ethical method was forced upon the participants, its utilization nonetheless facilitated of ethical consideration in the projects. Specifically, it resulted in the developers displaying more responsibility, even though the use of the tool did not stem from intrinsic motivation.

An early version of this paper was presented in the Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA 2019).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48276660.

  2. 2.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G.

References

  1. Abrahamsson, P.: Commitment nets in software process improvement. Ann. Softw. Eng. 14(1), 407–438 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020526329708

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Allen, C., Wallach, W., Smit, I.: Why machine ethics? IEEE Intell. Syst. 21(4), 12–17 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2006.83

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Bowie, N.E.: A kantian theory of meaningful work. J. Bus. Ethics 17(9), 1083–1092 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bryson, J., Winfield, A.: Standardizing ethical design for artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. Computer 50(5), 116–119 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2017.154

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Bynum, T.: Computer and information ethics. In: Zalta, E.N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab Stanford University (2018). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/ethics-computer/

  6. Charisi, V., et al.: Towards moral autonomous systems (2017). arXiv preprint arxiv.org/abs/1703.04741

  7. Dignum, V.: Responsible autonomy (2017). arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.02513, https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.02513

  8. Dignum, V.: Ethics in artificial intelligence: introduction to the special issue. Ethics Inf. Technol. 20(1), 1–3 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-018-9450-z

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  9. Eisenhardt, K.M.: Building theories from case study research. Acad. Manag. Rev. 14(4), 532–550 (1989)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Ethically aligned design: a vision for prioritizing human well-being with autonomous and intelligent systems, first edition (2019). https://standards.ieee.org/content/ieee-standards/en/industry-connections/ec/autonomous-systems.html

  11. Ethics guidelines for trustworthy ai (2019). https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/ethics-guidelines-trustworthy-ai

  12. Flores, A.W., Bechtel, K., Lowenkamp, C.T.: False positives, false negatives, and false analyses: a rejoinder to “machine bias: there’s software used across the country to predict future criminals, and it’s biased against blacks”. Fed. Probation 80(2), 38 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Gotterbarn, D.W., et al.: ACM code of ethics and professional conduct (2018). https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics

  14. Graziotin, D., Wang, X., Abrahamsson, P.: Are happy developers more productive? In: Heidrich, J., Oivo, M., Jedlitschka, A., Baldassarre, M.T. (eds.) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, pp. 50–64. Springer, Berlin (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39259-7_7

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Heath, H., Cowley, S.: Developing a grounded theory approach: a comparison of glaser and strauss. Int. J. Nurs. Stud. 41(2), 141–150 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0020-7489(03)00113-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Höst, M., Regnell, B., Wohlin, C.: Using students as subjects-a comparative study of students and professionals in lead-time impact assessment. Empirical Softw. Eng. 5(3), 201–214 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026586415054

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Johansen, C.: Teaching the ethics of biology. Am. Biol. Teacher 62(5), 352–358 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Lenberg, P., Feldt, R., Wallgren, L.G.: Behavioral software engineering: a definition and systematic literature review. J. Syst. Softw. 107, 15–37 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2015.04.084

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. McNamara, A., Smith, J., Murphy-Hill, E.: Does ACM’s code of ethics change ethical decision making in software development? In: Proceedings of the 2018 26th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering. pp. 729–733. ESEC/FSE 2018, ACM, New York, NY, USA (2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3236024.3264833

  20. Moor, J.H.: What is computer ethics? *. Metaphilosophy 16(4), 266–275 (1985)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Morley, J., Floridi, L., Kinsey, L., Elhalal, A.: From what to how. an overview of AI ethics tools, methods and research to translate principles into practices (2019). arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.06876, https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.06876

  22. Pfeiffer, R.S., Forsberg, R.P.: Ethics on the Job: Cases and Strategies. Wadsworth Publishing Company, California (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Runeson, P.: Using students as experiment subjects - an analysis on graduate and freshmen student data. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Empirical Assessment in Software Engineering, p. 95 (2003). http://lup.lub.lu.se/record/708340

  24. Strauss, A., Corbin, J.: Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 2nd edn. Sage Publications Inc, Thousand Oaks (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Turilli, M., Floridi, L.: The ethics of information transparency. Ethics Inf. Technol. 11(2), 105–112 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-009-9187-9

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Vakkuri, V., Kemell, K., Kultanen, J., Siponen, M.T., Abrahamsson, P.: Ethically aligned design of autonomous systems: Industry viewpoint and an empirical study (2019). arXiv preprint arxiv.org/abs/1906.07946

  27. Yin, R.K.: Qualitative Research from Start to Finish, 1st edn. Guilford Press, New York (2010)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Ville Vakkuri & Kai-Kristian Kemell

Authors
  1. Ville Vakkuri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kai-Kristian Kemell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ville Vakkuri .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tampere University of Technology, Pori, Finland

    Sami Hyrynsalmi

  2. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Mari Suoranta

  3. University of South-Eastern Norway, Bø i Telemark, Norway

    Anh Nguyen-Duc

  4. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Pasi Tyrväinen

  5. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Pekka Abrahamsson

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Vakkuri, V., Kemell, KK. (2019). Implementing AI Ethics in Practice: An Empirical Evaluation of the RESOLVEDD Strategy. In: Hyrynsalmi, S., Suoranta, M., Nguyen-Duc, A., Tyrväinen, P., Abrahamsson, P. (eds) Software Business. ICSOB 2019. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 370. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33742-1_21

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33742-1_21

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-33741-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-33742-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation