Ethics in Artificial Intelligence

This is the website for a project based in the Computer Science Department, University of Oxford, ‘Towards a Code of Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Research’, which is being carried out by Professor Mike Wooldridge, Professor Peter Millican, and Dr Paula Boddington. This is one of a group of projects funded by the Future of Life Institute in 2015 for a global research programme aimed at keeping AI beneficial to humanity, with a donation of $10 000 000 by Elon Musk. We were very excited to be one of 37 projects granted an award.

Our project summary Codes of ethics play an important role in many sciences. Such codes aim to provide a framework within which researchers can understand and anticipate the possible ethical issues that their research might raise, and to provide guidelines about what is, and is not, regarded as ethical behaviour. In the medical sciences, for example, codes of ethics are fundamentally embedded within the research culture of the discipline, and explicit consideration of ethical issues is a standard expectation when research projects are planned and undertaken. In this project, we aim to start developing a code of ethics for AI research by learning from this interdisciplinary experience and extending its lessons into new areas. The project will bring together three Oxford researchers with expertise in artificial intelligence, philosophy, and applied ethics.

A short account of the project in the Computer Science department newsletter, Inspired Research, summer 2016, can be found here.

We are building this website as an account of this project and as a resource for others working in the area, and for any interested person. Or, indeed, any interested intelligent machine.

We would like to thank the Future of Life Institute for their generous sponsorship of our programme of research.