AI ethics and systemic risks in finance

Abstract

The paper suggests that AI ethics should pay attention to morally relevant systemic effects of AI use. It draws the attention of ethicists and practitioners to systemic risks that have been neglected so far in professional AI-related codes of conduct, industrial standards and ethical discussions more generally. The paper uses the financial industry as an example to ask: how can AI-enhanced systemic risks be ethically accounted for? Which specific issues does AI use raise for ethics that takes systemic effects into account? The paper (1) relates the literature about AI ethics to the ethics of systemic risks to clarify the moral relevance of AI use with respect to the imposition of systemic risks, (2) proposes a theoretical framework based on the ethics of complexity and (3) applies this framework to discuss implications for AI ethics concerned with AI-enhanced systemic risks.

AI Ethics: A Call for Global Standards in Technology Development

“…Interestingly, efforts to establish standards for AI have revealed significant patterns of collaboration among technical experts from various geopolitical backgrounds on technical AI standards, while governments show less willingness to collaborate on global ethical AI standards (Ingersleben-Seip, 2023). This dichotomy highlights the necessity of multi-stakeholder consultations and crosssectional feedback in developing actionable AI ethical principles, as emphasized by Svetlova (2022) (Svetlova, 2022).…”