| Summary: | This thesis consists of two articles discussing the current state of practice on
artificial intelligence (AI) ethics implementation in the industry. As the usage of
AI in systems affecting peoples’ everyday lives constantly increases, public demand
for ethical consideration in AI development and deployment grows as
well. AI ethics has been discussed in the academia for decades, but a consensus
has yet to be found on what it means and contains. In this study, a framework
for AI ethics research is constructed based on ethical principles frequently discussed
in academic literature. Based on the framework, first, a multiple case
study via semi-structured interviews in software companies developing AI systems
is conducted, to gain a preliminary understanding on the AI ethics implementation
in the industry. Second, a large-scale industrial survey is executed in
order to achieve an in-depth understanding on the current state of practice on
AI ethics implementation in the industry, and through larger sampling be able
to generalize the results. The study found a clear gap between research and
practice regarding the implementation of AI ethics. In particular, developers are
not aware of the academic discourse on AI ethics and they consider AI ethics
important only in principle. As a result, AI ethics principles are not implemented
in practice. It was also discovered that the industry professionals do not utilize
any tools or methods to implement AI ethics, and the industry does not
have any common practices for the implementation of AI ethics either. In this
study, means are suggested for narrowing the gap between research and practice
for better implementation of ethics in AI system development.
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