Avoiding Responsibility Monoculture: Cultivating a Thriving Ecosystem of Responsibility for AI

What ought we to make the ‘responsible’ in ‘Responsible AI’ (R-AI)? It seems like the best fit for this kind of responsibility is to understand it as a term of praise. When we talk about ‘responsible’ AI, we are envisioning the AI in question as having been developed or deployed in a way that was commendable and trustworthy. However, R-AI is not just a simple term of praise, but a contested idea that stands for a number of different and at times contradictory things. So there remains both conceptual and practical uncertainty regarding the meaning of the term and its proper use. To reduce that uncertainty, I compare three oft-used meanings of the Responsible AI concept, and unify them under a fourth, more holistic, ecological understanding of R-AI that can bring greater clarity to the topic for academics, policymakers, educators, and those in industry.