Mapping AI ethics: a meso-scale analysis of its charters and manifestos

The recent years have seen a surge of initiatives with the goal of defining what "ethical" artificial intelligence would or should entail, resulting in the publication of various charters and manifestos discussing AI ethics; these documents originate from academia, AI industry companies, non-profits, regulatory institutions, and the civil society. The contents of such documents vary wildly, from short, vague position statements to verbatims of democratic debates or impact assessment studies. As such, they are a marker of the social world of artificial intelligence, outlining the tenets of different actors, the consensus and dissensus on important goals, and so on.