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An embedded ethics approach for AI development

Nature Machine Intelligence volume 2, pages 488–490 (2020)Cite this article

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There is a need to consider how AI developers can be practically assisted in identifying and addressing ethical issues. In this Comment, a group of AI engineers, ethicists and social scientists suggest embedding ethicists into the development team as one way of improving the consideration of ethical issues during AI development.

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Acknowledgements

The support by the Bavarian Institute for Digital Transformation is gratefully acknowledged. L.A.C. is funded by the National Institute of Health through NIBIB R01 EB017205.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of History and Ethics in Medicine, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Stuart McLennan, Amelia Fiske & Alena Buyx

  2. Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Leo Anthony Celi

  3. Harvard–Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Leo Anthony Celi

  4. Munich Center for Technology in Society, School of Management and School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Ruth Müller

  5. Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Jan Harder, Konstantin Ritt, Sami Haddadin & Alena Buyx

Authors
  1. Stuart McLennan
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  2. Amelia Fiske
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  4. Ruth Müller
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  7. Sami Haddadin
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  8. Alena Buyx
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Contributions

S.M. and A.B. conceived the initial idea of the paper. S.M. prepared the initial draft with the assistance of A.F., in regular discussion with A.B., who provided feedback and comments. L.A.C., R.M., J.H., K.R. and S.H. reviewed the draft and critically revised it for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final version of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stuart McLennan.

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Competing interests

A.B. is a member of the German Ethics Council. S.H. is a member of the European High-Level Group on Artificial Intelligence, and is a founder of robotics company Franka Emika.

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McLennan, S., Fiske, A., Celi, L.A. et al. An embedded ethics approach for AI development. Nat Mach Intell 2, 488–490 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-0214-1

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