Ethics in the Age of AI: An Analysis of AI Practitioners' Awareness and Challenges

TL;DR

This study surveys AI practitioners to assess their awareness of AI ethics, identifies challenges faced in ethical AI development, and offers recommendations to improve ethical practices in AI systems.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into AI practitioners' understanding of AI ethics and highlights specific challenges and areas for further research.

Findings

Most practitioners are familiar with AI ethics mainly through workplace policies.

Privacy and security are the most recognized ethical principles.

Challenges include general, technological, and human factors.

Abstract

Ethics in AI has become a debated topic of public and expert discourse in recent years. But what do people who build AI - AI practitioners - have to say about their understanding of AI ethics and the challenges associated with incorporating it in the AI-based systems they develop? Understanding AI practitioners' views on AI ethics is important as they are the ones closest to the AI systems and can bring about changes and improvements. We conducted a survey aimed at understanding AI practitioners' awareness of AI ethics and their challenges in incorporating ethics. Based on 100 AI practitioners' responses, our findings indicate that majority of AI practitioners had a reasonable familiarity with the concept of AI ethics, primarily due to workplace rules and policies. Privacy protection and security was the ethical principle that majority of them were aware of. Formal education/training was considered somewhat helpful in preparing practitioners to incorporate AI ethics. The challenges that AI practitioners faced in the development of ethical AI-based systems included (i) general challenges, (ii) technology-related challenges and (iii) human-related challenges. We also identified areas needing further investigation and provided recommendations to assist AI practitioners and companies in incorporating ethics into AI development.