Ethics, Transparency, Fairness and the Responsibility of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI), in all its different sub-fields, has grown significantly over the past years. When compared with other scientific or technological fields, this can almost be seen as a revolution. Nonetheless, as in other revolutions, not all that revolves around AI evolved at the same pace. As a consequence, many serious legal and ethical issues on the use of Artificial Intelligence are presently being raised. This paper addresses the main root causes for these problems from a technical standpoint, and then analyzes the legal and ethical framework. Finally, the paper describes a range of techniques and methods that can be used to address the identified problems, namely by ensuring transparency, fairness, equality, explanability and avoiding bias or discrimination. The field is presently at a tipping point, which can either lead to an avoidance of Artificial Intelligence due to fear or lack of regulation, or to a wide adoption supported by increased transparency and more human-centered approaches. Given the recent developments addressed in this paper, the paper argues in favor of a tendency towards the latter.