Perceptions of AI Ethics Policies Among Scientists and Engineers in Policy-Related Roles: An Exploratory Investigation

Abstract

Abstract The explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past few years has focused attention on how diverse stakeholders regulate these technologies to ensure their safe and ethical use. Increasingly, governmental bodies, corporations, and nonprofit organizations are developing strategies and policies for AI governance. While existing literature on ethical AI has focused on the various principles and guidelines that have emerged as a result of these efforts, just how these principles are operationalized and translated to broader policy is still the subject of current research. Specifically, there is a gap in our understanding of how policy practitioners actively engage with, contextualize, or reflect on existing AI ethics policies in their daily professional activities. The perspectives of these policy experts towards AI regulation generally are not fully understood. To this end, this paper explores the perceptions of scientists and engineers in policy-related roles in the US public and nonprofit sectors towards AI ethics policy, both in the US and abroad. We interviewed 15 policy experts and found that although these experts were generally familiar with AI governance efforts within their domains, overall knowledge of guiding frameworks and critical regulatory policies was still limited. There was also a general perception among the experts we interviewed that the US lagged behind other comparable countries in regulating AI, a finding that supports the conclusion of existing literature. Lastly, we conducted a preliminary comparison between the AI ethics policies identified by the policy experts in our study and those emphasized in existing literature, identifying both commonalities and areas of divergence.

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