Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Research Challenges and Potential Solutions

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly emerging paradigm with many applications in healthcare, industries, and smart cities. However, this rise of global interest in AI has fueled a renewed interest from the public sector and global policymakers. As AI networks (e.g., chatbots, automation systems, and helping agents) are paving their way as interactive household items, a critically important research issue is understanding the ethical impact of these autonomous agents. What is the explanation of the AI decision-making process? What are the legal, societal, and moral consequences of these decisions and actions? Should these AI systems be allowed to make decisions for human beings and to what extent? These questions along with some of the underlying concerns are the main research focus of modern societies and institutions. Contrary to the popular and frightening dystopic image of AI, this article aims to present recent research developments on the ethics of AI. In particular, a concise and brief introduction to different AI techniques is provided which is followed by a detailed discussion on the ethics of AI and its influencing components. Since data is the key to improve AI algorithms, details on developing high-quality data are also given. Finally, some solutions to the ethical issues of AI are discussed. This article is expected to act as a fundamental building block and as a comprehensive survey for ethical solutions of AI systems.