The Institute for Experiential AI (EAI) is excited to announce the formation of its AI Ethics Advisory Board (AIEB). With more than 40 experts from academia, industry, and government, the ethics board will help organizations adopt, develop, and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) in a responsible manner.

Representing a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences, the AI Ethics Advisory Board is composed of Northeastern University faculty members, as well as experts from key industry stakeholders and outside organizations. With on-demand, multidisciplinary teams of AI experts, the Board can provide ethical guidance for any AI project. 

When it comes to AI, risks are legion: Algorithmic bias, black box models, privacy violations, compliance oversights, and security exploits are just a few of the ways AI can go wrong, and the risks do not dissolve where business ends. Rather, they spread out and affect society in complex, often unaccountable ways. Marginalized groups, in particular, tend to suffer the most when AI stakeholders mismanage their data or embrace short-sighted development strategies.

The AI Ethics Advisory Board will serve as stewards for responsible AI in business, public policy, and beyond. With decades of collective experience in ethics, AI research, and AI practice, the board offers organizations guidance on how to put ethical goals like fairness, autonomy, and individual and societal well-being at the heart of innovation. 

“The AI Ethics Advisory Board is meant to help organizations figure out: What is the right thing to do in developing or deploying AI systems and how can we best make it happen?” said Cansu Canca, Ethics Lead at EAI and Co-Chair of the AI Ethics Advisory Board. “This is the ethics question. But to answer it we need more than just AI and ethics knowledge… Our mindset is for truly solving questions, not just ‘managing’ the question for the client.”

Taking ethics seriously and acting on it, in that sense, has to begin with the recognition of a problem. In seeking AI solutions, too many organizations frame their problems in the context of their particular business or industry, failing to see how they branch off into society at large. That means that, for any organization working with AI, ethical concerns are present from the jump, even if they’re not visible.

“Ethics is not something you can just patch onto an existing AI system,” said Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Director of Research at EAI and Co-Chair of the AI Ethics Advisory Board. “It needs to be present in all conversations from design to deployment. An independent, on-demand panel of world-class AI experts offers maybe the only way to ensure those ethical responsibilities are not curbed by conflicting interests or financial pressures.”

Given the tremendous societal impact of deployed AI, it’s imperative that businesses grasp the weight of their AI-driven decisions and understand that the pressure to practice responsible AI will only grow with time. The AI Ethics Advisory Board at the Institute for Experiential AI alleviates these pressures with top-level, independent ethical guidance for organizations of all sizes.

Learn how the AI Ethics Advisory Board can help your organization.