A recent survey in Germany found that people increasingly would like to see AI deployed in a variety of application fields, and in particular in healthcare-related sectors. This is most probably due to the multiple opportunities AI can offer. However, serious, especially ethical, issues arise with its use. Not least the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us how technologies which could help solve demanding challenges, however need to be carefully reflected on and designed to foster trust and well-being of society. To address and manage the risks arising from such ethical concerns, researchers have developed recommendations, such as the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence by the European Commission, or the Ethical Framework for a Good AI Society by the AI4People Committee. However, these frameworks tend to be rather broad and need to be adapted to the specific application contexts. One of the current challenges for AI ethics research, and even more so for responsible AI use in sensitive areas such as healthcare, is therefore to develop concrete and applicable guidelines that can be used and implemented directly on specific AI systems. Examples will be given.
Christoph Lütge is Full Professor of Business Ethics at TU Munich and the Director of the Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence (IEAI). He is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Tokyo University and has held further visiting positions at Harvard, Stockholm, Taipei and Kyoto. His most recent book is “Business Ethics: An Economically Informed Perspective” (Oxford University Press, 2021, with Matthias Uhl). He is a member of the European AI Ethics initiative AI4People and of the German Ethics Commission on Automated and Connected Driving.
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