Actionable Approaches to Promote Ethical AI in Libraries

Abstract: The widespread use of AI in many domains has revealed numerous ethical issues from data and design to deployment. In response, countless broad principles and guidelines for ethical AI have been published, and following those, specific approaches have been proposed for how to encourage ethical outcomes of AI. Meanwhile, library and information services too are seeing an increase in the use of AI-powered and machine learning-powered information systems, but no practical guidance currently exists for libraries to plan for, evaluate, or audit the ethics of intended or deployed AI. We therefore report on several promising approaches for promoting ethical AI that can be adapted from other contexts to AI-powered information services and in different stages of the software lifecycle.