Evidence-based AI Ethics

With the rise in prominence of algorithmic-decision making, and numerous high-profile failures, many people have called for the integration of ethics into the development and use of these technologies. In the past five years, the field of “AI Ethics” has risen to prominence to explore questions such as 'how can ML algorithms be more fair' and 'are are tradeoffs when incorporating values such as fairness or privacy into models.' One common trend, particularly by corporations and governments, has been a top-down, principles-based approach for setting the agenda. However, such efforts are usually too abstract to engage with; everyone agrees models should be fair, but there is often disagreement on what "fair" means. In this work, I propose a bottom-up alternative: Evidence-based AI Ethics. Learning from other influential movements, such as Evidence-based Medicine, we can consider specific projects and examine them for "evidence." We draw from complementary critical lenses, one based on utilitarian ethics and on from intersectional feminism to analyze five case studies I have worked on, ranging from automatically-generated radiology reports to tech worker organizing.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Boag, William

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Szolovits, Peter

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright MIT

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144715

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/144715