Ethics in AI

Guide for Artificial Intelligence Ethical Requirements Elicitation

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Introduction

This guide assists the elicitation of Ethical Requirements in AI-based systems by software development teams, with a focus on agile teams, where Product Owners and developers use a set of cards to answer questions related to ethical principles in AI at each sprint, creating requirements in the form of user stories and including them in Sprint backlogs.

This deck of cards works like a Planning Poker. There are 25 cards separated across 11 Principles. The cards contain Preamble, Issues to be addressed, Illustration and Tool Suggestion.

The user must start with card 0, then select any card, and can: use the Compare option, selecting specific cards to display them in order to compare them with others - from different principles or not; use the Filter option, displaying all cards from a specific principle. 

The development team should document the discussion made through the cards, as well as the consensus reached, so that possible changes can be re-evaluated later. In this way, the principles of Transparency and Trust are enabled.

During the requirements elicitation phase there is a greater interaction between different actors involved in the software development and its use, providing a fertile environment for debate on ethical issues, and there is a reduction of additional work by considering ethical issues in the early stages of software development, and not as an afterthought.

There is no minimum number of cards required in each Sprint, nor is there an order to be followed.

Feel free to choose any card and start eliciting ethical requirements for AI-based systems!