Empathetic AI for Ethics-in-the-Small

There has been much media attention on the society-wide effects of the rapid and unfettered deployment of AI (by AI, we mean any device/algorithm that uses AI techniques as part of its functioning, not necessarily just self-driving cars, robots, etc.). Most of these have focused on ethics-in-the-large, i.e., concepts like justice, fairness, bias—which can only be evaluated on a whole-society basis. We think that an equally important and immediate concern should be ethics-in-the-small, where technology has the potential to affect the quality of individual human lives. Consider, for example, mental-health apps that purport to offer support to individuals, or digital personal assistants that function as companions. Here, the notion of ethical behavior tends to be defined more by the individual’s particular circumstances rather than general principles.