9/27/22, 6:19 PM Putting Responsible AI Into Practice

Putting Responsible AI Into

Practice
A survey of individuals driving ethical AI efforts found that the practice has a long
way to go.

Rumman Chowdhury, Bogdana Rakova, Henriette Cramer, and Jingying Yang • October 22, 2020

Reading Time: 7 min

As awareness grows regarding the risks associated

with deploying AI systems that violate legal, ethical, or
cultural norms, building responsible AI and machine
learning technology has become a paramount
concern in organizations across all sectors.
Individuals tasked with leading responsible-AI efforts
are shifting their focus from establishing high-level

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principles and guidance to managing the system-level

change that is necessary to make responsible AI a
reality.

Ethics frameworks and principles abound.

AlgorithmWatch maintains a repository of more than
150 ethical guidelines. A meta-analysis of a half-dozen
prominent guidelines identified five main themes:
transparency, justice and fairness, non-maleficence,
responsibility, and privacy. But even if there is broad
agreement on the principles underlying responsible
AI, how to effectively put them into practice remains
unclear. Organizations are in various states of
adoption, have a wide range of internal organizational
structures, and are often still determining the
appropriate governance frameworks to hold
themselves accountable.

In order to determine whether, and how, these

principles are being applied in practice, and to identify
actions companies can take to use AI responsibly, we
interviewed 24 AI practitioners across multiple
industries and fields. These individuals with
responsible AI in their remit included technologists
(data scientists and AI engineers), lawyers,
industrial/organizational psychologists, project
managers, and others. In each interview, we focused
on three main phases of transition: the prevalent
state, which identified where the organization was as a
whole with responsible AI; the emerging state,
detailing the practices that individuals who were
focused on responsible AI had created though they
had not yet been fully integrated into the company;

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and the aspirational state — the ideal state where

responsible AI practices would be common and
integrated into work processes.

The State of the Field

Most of the practitioners we interviewed indicated
that their companies’ approach to responsible AI has
been mostly reactive to date. The primary motivators
for acting on ethical threats come from external
pressures, such as reputational harm or compliance
risk. Often, media attention serves to further internal
initiatives for responsible AI by amplifying reputational
risk.

This reactive response is driven in part by a lack of

metrics to assess the success of responsible-AI
initiatives. Without standards for implementation,
assessment, and tracking, it is difficult to demonstrate
whether an algorithmic model is performing well from
a responsibility standpoint. Where model
performance metrics exist, they are generally not
integrated with ethical touch points and rather focus
on things like efficiency, engagement gains, and short-
term profitability.

Interviewees reported being measured on productivity

and contributions to revenue, with little value placed
on preventing reputational or compliance harm and
mitigating risk. Understandably, practitioners find it
difficult to measure and determine the value of long-
term benefits to the organization when they come at

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the expense of short-term product success as

measured by deliverables and revenue.

In order to succeed, responsible-AI efforts need more

organizational support in the form of governance and
accountability, and coordinated participation from a
range of relevant stakeholders such as legal, HR,
communications, design, and engineering.

The majority of interviewees reported misalignment

between individual-, team-, and organizational-level
incentives and mission statements. A lack of
organizational governance of AI systems leads to
competing incentive structures and power plays. In
most cases, these ambiguities created conflict among
teams as each competed to show value across
metrics that were at odds with each other. With no
clear ownership or governance structure, problems
remain unresolved and organizational inertia
discourages many of those tasked with responsible-AI
efforts from continuing to pursue their work.

Where Are We Heading in

the Short Term?
As the field matures, internal and external levers are
beginning to enable more forward-thinking processes.
Practitioners we spoke with are cautiously optimistic
about the near-term future of responsible AI.

One bright point is the emergence of more internal

processes for communicating about and overseeing
ethical risks in AI. Internal cross-functional reviews of
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responsibility and fairness aspects of AI were often

the result of grassroots action from within the
organization. One participant shared that they used to
take screenshots of problematic algorithmic
outcomes and circulate them among key internal
stakeholders to support the case for responsible-AI
oversight. Respondents also reported a growing
number of educational initiatives for training
employees on responsible-AI practices such as
fairness, transparency, and “explainability.”

Although education is an important element, it is still

just one piece of the overall picture. Organizations
must have clear processes in place for raising,
investigating, and addressing issues related to
responsible AI. Just as organizations have established
clear channels for raising HR, compliance, and even
broader ethical concerns, there must be a pathway for
reporting issues with how AI is used.

Responsible AI should also become part of employee

performance discussions. The implementation of
appropriate success metrics for individuals was
repeatedly identified as an area to target for
development. As companies hire more people to staff
responsible-AI roles, these individuals may sit in
human resources, legal, engineering, IT, or marketing,
depending on the organization. Given the diversity of
primary job functions and reporting structures, it’s
important to clearly define how employees in each of
these areas are expected to foster responsible AI
within the organization. Providing career incentives to
act ethically will help drive success.

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What Is the Future of

Responsible AI?
When asked what an ideal future state would look like,
interviewees preferred an approach that anticipates
rather than reacts to risk. In order to achieve that,
organizations need standard processes,
communication, and transparency.

To the first point, they must provide a framework that

explains responsible-AI processes but is both general
and flexible enough that it can be applied to different
contexts. For example, ensuring that a framework
identifies and mitigates bias for an employment
model may mean very different things (from a legal
and ethical perspective) than mitigating bias in a
video recommendation algorithm.

They must also ensure that communication around

these issues is understandable to multiple audiences,
whether the legal and compliance team, nontechnical
stakeholders, or end users. And finally, processes
must be transparent. Identifying not only accountable
parties (plural) but also clearly defining the scope of
what they are responsible for enables confidence in
adopting responsible-AI practices. For end users, this
may mean being clear about how decisions were
arrived at and how they can refute or report incorrect
outcomes.

According to our experts, in an ideal future state, both

product and person metrics are intertwined. An ideal
state is one in which the organization employs a data-

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informed approach to managing ethical challenges

that celebrates proactive pioneers, qualitative work,
and harder-to-measure innovations that pay off in
longer timelines. For products, this may mean
expanding the time frame by which performance
goals are mapped, appreciating that ethical
considerations may require a different or longer
amount of time. For individuals, this would mean
respecting the variety of skill sets required to ensure
true responsible-AI implementation and rewarding
innovative behavior.

An ideal state of organizational culture is one in which

there is no fear of retribution or harm for internally
reporting ethical issues, there are clear channels
through which issues can be escalated, and teams are
able to bring in individuals with specific expertise as
needed. Leadership must articulate values and
principles, make it clear that practices must be
aligned with these values, and provide resources to
support those practices.

How Do We Get There?

In bringing their principles to practice, companies can
take a few key steps.

First, they must create organizational transparency

and diffuse accountability. This can be achieved by
strong governance methodologies and a clear chain of
command and serves to resolve tensions, create
appropriate priorities, and move from a reactive to an
anticipatory response to ethical harm. Many
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companies have moved to create AI review boards, for

example, consisting of leadership from different parts
of the company. Next steps are to create governance
structures and identify roles and expectations around
responsible-AI practices. What are the steps and who
are the people to best identify and mitigate potential
harm at all stages of the project development
process?

Second, coordinate the drivers for change inside and

outside of the organization. External groups —
whether academic bodies or industry research
organizations — are a valuable resource for best
practices and guidelines, but they need to be adapted
and implemented in ways that make sense for each
organization and address the issues it is most likely to
encounter. Governance guidelines should clearly
address why they are in place and leave little room for
interpretation, which can lead to the slippery slope of
“exceptions to the rule.” This means ensuring that
teams across different functions — such as
leadership, data science, and legal — understand the
imperatives and incentives of each.

Finally, expand the notion of measurable value to

evolve from a short-term to longer-term mindset while
also appreciating the importance of the
immeasurable. If organizations are truly to build
value-driven technology, their organizational
structures will have to evolve to meet these lofty
aspirations.

Topics

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Data, AI, & Machine Learning AI & Machine Learning

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Rumman Chowdhury is global lead for responsible AI at

Accenture. Bogdana Rakova is a responsible-AI data scientist
at Accenture. Henriette Cramer is a principal researcher and
director of algorithmic responsibility at Spotify. Jingying
Yang is head of product design at the Partnership on AI.

TAGS:

Artificial Intelligence Ethics Risk Management

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