Ethics and Privacy in AI and Big Data: Implementing Responsible Research and Innovation

TLDR

AI and big data applications are attracting media and policy scrutiny, largely because of privacy and ethical concerns. The article proposes using responsible research and innovation (RRI) to comprehensively understand and address these issues, engaging stakeholders to ensure the technologies’ benefits outweigh their disadvantages. RRI is framed as a practical approach, illustrated through the Human Brain Project, to guide socially acceptable, desirable, and sustainable AI and big data technologies.

Abstract

Emerging combinations of artificial intelligence, big data, and the applications these enable are receiving significant media and policy attention. Much of the attention concerns privacy and other ethical issues. In our article, we suggest that what is needed now is a way to comprehensively understand these issues and find mechanisms of addressing them that involve stakeholders, including civil society, to ensure that these technologies' benefits outweigh their disadvantages. We suggest that the concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI) can provide the framing required to act with a view to ensuring that the technologies are socially acceptable, desirable, and sustainable. We draw from our work on the Human Brain Project, one potential driver for the next generation of these technologies, to discuss how RRI can be put in practice.