AI4People—An Ethical Framework for a Good AI Society: Opportunities, Risks, Principles, and Recommendations

Europe, and the world at large, face the emergence of a technology that holds much exciting promise for many aspects of human life, and yet seems to pose major threats as well. This article—and especially the Recommendations in the previous section—seek to nudge the tiller in the direction of ethically and socially preferable outcomes from the development, design and deployment of AI technologies. Building on our identification of both the core opportunities and the risks of AI for society as well as the set of five ethical principles we synthesised to guide its adoption, we formulated 20 Action Points in the spirit of collaboration and in the interest of creating concrete and constructive responses to the most pressing social challenges posed by AI.

With the rapid pace of technological change, it can be tempting to view the political process in the liberal democracies of today as old-fashioned, out-of-step, and no longer up to the task of preserving the values and promoting the interests of society and everyone in it. We disagree. With the Recommendations we offer here, including the creation of centres, agencies, curricula, and other infrastructure, we have made the case for an ambitious, inclusive, equitable programme of policy making and technological innovation, which we believe will contribute to securing the benefits and mitigating the risks of AI, for all people, and for the world we share.