Principled artificial intelligence: mapping consensus in ethical and rights-based approaches to principles for AI

Abstract

In the past several years, seemingly every organization with a connection to technology policy has authored or endorsed a set of principles for AI. As guidelines for ethical, rights-respecting, and socially beneficial AI develop in tandem with – and as rapidly as – the underlying technology, there is an urgent need to understand them, individually and in context. To that end, we analyzed the contents of thirty-six prominent AI principles documents, and in the process, discovered thematic trends that suggest the earliest emergence of sectoral norms. While each set of principles serves the same basic purpose, to present a vision for the governance of AI, the documents in our dataset are diverse. They vary in their intended audience, composition, scope, and depth. They come from Latin America, East and South Asia, the Middle East, North America, and Europe, and cultural differences doubtless impact their contents. Perhaps most saliently, though, they are authored by different actors: governments and intergovernmental organizations, companies, professional associations, advocacy groups, and multi-stakeholder initiatives. Civil society and multistakeholder documents may serve to set an advocacy agenda or establish a floor for ongoing discussions. National governments’ principles are often presented as part of an overall national AI strategy. Many private sector principles appear intended to govern the authoring organization’s internal development and use of AI technology, as well as to communicate its goals to other relevant stakeholders including customers and regulators. Given the range of variation across numerous axes, it’s all the more surprising that our close study of AI principles documents revealed common themes.