Are You Worthy of My Trust?: A Socioethical Perspective on the Impacts of Trustworthy AI Systems on the Environment and Human Society

TL;DR

This paper discusses the societal and environmental impacts of trustworthy AI systems, emphasizing the need for a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to assess and mitigate risks to human well-being and the environment.

Contribution

It provides a high-level overview of AI's societal impacts, highlighting the importance of multi-disciplinary governance and systemic examination for trustworthy AI.

Findings

AI systems have significant environmental impacts, such as energy consumption and carbon footprint.

Societal risks include social development challenges and well-being concerns.

Holistic, socioethical assessments are essential for responsible AI deployment.

Abstract

With ubiquitous exposure of AI systems today, we believe AI development requires crucial considerations to be deemed trustworthy. While the potential of AI systems is bountiful, though, is still unknown-as are their risks. In this work, we offer a brief, high-level overview of societal impacts of AI systems. To do so, we highlight the requirement of multi-disciplinary governance and convergence throughout its lifecycle via critical systemic examinations (e.g., energy consumption), and later discuss induced effects on the environment (i.e., carbon footprint) and its users (i.e., social development). In particular, we consider these impacts from a multi-disciplinary perspective: computer science, sociology, environmental science, and so on to discuss its inter-connected societal risks and inability to simultaneously satisfy aspects of well-being. Therefore, we accentuate the necessity of holistically addressing pressing concerns of AI systems from a socioethical impact assessment perspective to explicate its harmful societal effects to truly enable humanity-centered Trustworthy AI.