White Paper Launch and Workshop: General Ethical Requirements for AI Certification
This event will take place at the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn in Germany. For more information, see the link below.
"General Ethical Requirements for AI Certification"  a conversation with Jocelyn Maclure and Markus Gabriel and launch of the whitepaper by Nicholas Kluge Corrêa and Julia Maria Mönig.
The research project "Certified AI" explores the question of what a certification of "trustworthy AI" could look like. The philosophy team, Nicholas Kluge Corrêa and Julia Maria Mönig, research this question from an ethical perspective.
While many arguments can be raised against certifying "ethical" AI, with our latest publication we offer guidance to computer scientists and programmers on how to try to make AI-based applications more "ethical". We do this by presenting (a list of) ethical principles that are consistent with other proposals in the literature. We briefly explain what the values are and why they are important, and give examples to align them with the risk categories of the European AI Act (2024). To operationalize the principles, for each step we propose methods and technical tools that can be used to put the ethical requirements into practice. In the long run, this could serve as a way to make the tech industry's current profit-driven motto of "move fast and break things" fairer, more privacy- preserving, safer and more robust, sustainable and transparent, while promoting accountability and truthfulness, if developers adhere to the proposed practices.ÂArguments against ethics 'certification' (including by the authors) are that companies and other stakeholders could use it as 'ethics washing'. In addition, practices may evolve over time and therefore certification (as in other areas) could only be valid for a limited period of time, if at all, after which it would need to be renewed. In addition, ethical tools may not have the intended effects, as has been shown in the literature, e.g. for the example of fairness algorithms. Last but not least, it is difficult to 'standardise' ethics, as this entails quantification, whereas ethics refers to and consists of deliberation, with values that may change over time, and in a liberal-democratic system must take into account the views of all stakeholders, especially vulnerable groups. We hence suggest that the efforts laid out in the paper would need to be accompanied for instance by workshops, guidance by professional ethicists and discussions with involved stakeholders.
While the values presented in the white paper resonate with those usually attributed to the so-called "Global North", we understand these values as being universal, with human dignity and respect at their core. The four overarching principles of autonomy, beneficence, no harm and accountability are intended to serve all humans on earth, and call for the ethical inclusion of all potentially affected stakeholders,  e.g. through the principle of sustainability that addresses problems caused by the actions of the "Global North" on the "Global South".
In this workshop we will present the guidelines in the presence of Markus Gabriel, the principal investigator of the philosophy subproject of "Zertifizierte KI", and Jocelyn Maclure who will comment on them from a philosophical perspective, drawing on his expertise and decade-long experience in AI ethics.