Multicultural Design and Ubuntu Ethics
Abstract: Much has been recently published on the core ethical values guiding policy frameworks on responsible AI. While many of these ethical principles form a common core or corpus of values shared between and across applications and locations, their realisation must be articulable through lenses that are relevant and appropriate to a particular context. Lenses, we argue, should be multicultural in formulation. One such multicultural lens is the traditional philosophy of sub-Saharan Africa of Ubuntu which prizes communitarianism and values ideas of humanness, co-operation, and reciprocity. The development and deployment of AI cannot be divorced from important socio-political, philosophical, and normative debates involving inclusion and diversity. While foreground values such as transparency, fairness, and justice give an appearance of consensus, their use is highly contextually-sensitive and application-specific. Informing an algorithmic outcome requires consideration of a multitude of normatively-relevant reasons – both quantitative and qualitative – and includes consideration of underlying prevailing values, interests, and duties. Reasons that provide a scaffold for building an ethical case and providing a legitimate pathway for explicitly selecting (either by justifying or refuting) the course of action an algorithmic system should follow. We argue that any account of meaningful embedded intelligence should include as part of the conversation previously marginalised, silenced, and under-represented voices in both establishing this common core of values and in articulating how these values find application. Not only is the system itself a network of functions, but it is one embodied and embedded within a broader holistic and connected functioning system of real life and is not independent from it. A real-world that is by nature and design multicultural. Thus, the system must not only account for, and follow, the rules of – and be integrated within – a cultural and societal domain but actively participate and contribute to it.
Author bios: Dr. Bev Townsend is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the York Law School at the University of York, UK and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her expertise is in integrating law and ethics into safe and resilient autonomous systems (robots). Her research has focused on law, ethics, human rights, artificial intelligence, and governance.
Dr. Bongi Shozi is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute of Practical Ethics at the University of California, San Diego and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Professor Donrich Thaldar is an academic at the Law School of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, where he chairs the Health Law & Ethics Research Interest Group. He is the Principal Investigator of a research project on the legal aspects of the use of data science in health innovation in Africa, funded by the NIH. He also has a private legal practice, and has served as legal counsel in 13 reported cases.
Recorded Presentation | 27 April 2023
#InterculturalApproaches #Ubuntu #Ethics #Citizens
