Assessing the ethical and social concerns of artificial intelligence in neuroinformatics research: an empirical test of the European Union Assessment List for Trustworthy AI (ALTAI)

Stahl, Bernd Carsten; Leach, Tonii

Abstract

Ethical and social concerns are a key obstacle to the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the life sciences and beyond. The discussion of these issues has intensified in recent years and led to a number of approaches, tools and initiatives. Key amongst them is the idea of ex-ante impact assessments that aim to identify issues at the early stages of development. One prominent example of such ex-ante impact assessment is the European Union's (EU) Assessment list for Trustworthy AI (ALTAI). This article uses the findings of a large-scale application of the ALTAI to a large neuro-informatics project as an exemplar to demonstrate the effectiveness and limitations of the ALTAI in practice. The article shows that ex-ante impact assessment has the potential to help identify and address ethical and social issues. However, they need to be understood as part of a broader socio-technical ecosystem of AI. For ALTAI and related approaches to be useful in bio-medical research, they should be interpreted from a systems theory perspective which allows for their integration into the rich set of tools, legislation and approaches. The paper argues that ex-ante impact assessments have the best chance of being successful if seen applied in conjunction with other approaches in the context of the overall AI ecosystem.

Citation

Stahl, B. C., & Leach, T. (2023). Assessing the ethical and social concerns of artificial intelligence in neuroinformatics research: an empirical test of the European Union Assessment List for Trustworthy AI (ALTAI). AI and Ethics, 3, 745-767. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-022-00201-4

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 21, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Sep 19, 2022
• Publication Date: 2023-08
• Deposit Date: Oct 20, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 21, 2022
• Journal: AI and Ethics
• Electronic ISSN: 2730-5961
• Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 3
• Pages: 745-767
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-022-00201-4
• Keywords: ALTAI ; Artificial intelligence ; Ethics ; Impact assessment
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/12620562
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-022-00201-4