Featured Publication — ISACA · July 2023, Volume 4
Designing Ethical Systems by Auditing Ethics
Ethics treated as a communications function fails when it is tested. This paper argues that ethics must be embedded as a design requirement and audited as such.
Ethics in emerging technology is often treated as a set of principles to be endorsed rather than requirements to be implemented and verified. Organisations publish responsible technology commitments, deploy systems that violate them, and face reputational or regulatory consequences that were foreseeable.
This paper argues that ethics must be embedded as a design requirement and audited as a technical and operational matter, not evaluated after the fact through a communications lens. The author provides a framework for auditing ethical processes across the technology lifecycle, from initial design through deployment and ongoing operation.
“When organisations fail to embed ethics within their development processes, the consequences arrive suddenly and publicly. Audit is the mechanism that closes that gap before it becomes a crisis.”
Published in ISACA Journal, Volume 4, 2023, the article draws on the author’s work developing AI audit frameworks with ForHumanity and the University of Pittsburgh CAIR Lab.
Authors
Joshua Scarpino
CEO & Founder, Assessed Intelligence
Publication
ISACA
July 2023, Volume 4
Published Research
Read the Full Article
Designing Ethical Systems by Auditing Ethics, published in ISACA, July 2023, Volume 4.
