The AI ETHICS Checklist

The age of generative AI is clearly upon us, and it’s likely to be the most disruptive new technology of the decade. For researchers, entrepreneurs, and corporate development teams alike, the rapid rise and evolution of large language models and generative AI comes with a lot of potential unintended side effects and risks.

At Obvious we encourage our companies to regularly ask “what could possibly go wrong?” in the hopes they can build better safety, trust, and ethics into their exponential technology. Here’s our simple checklist of questions for AI teams to ask:

E — Explainable

Are significant decisions made by your AI explainable? Can humans appeal, modify, and override those decisions?

T — Transparent

Are your development, training datasets and deployment processes transparent? Do you have a process to receive feedback and make changes from the broader community outside your team or company?

H — Human-centered

Is your AI designed with human values and needs in mind? Does it prioritize the well-being of humans?

I — Inclusive

Have you taken steps to identify and remove bias from your AI systems? Are you testing your AI to ensure it does not inadvertently discriminate against any group of people?

C — Civil

Does your AI take steps to ensure civil communication? Does it drive conversation and action that is factually correct and beneficial to society? Do you incorporate fingerprinting or other methods to mark your output data as generative?

S — Sustainable

Have you considered the environmental impact that your AI has on the planet? Is there a path to make your AI compute stack carbon neutral?

Are you building a world positive generative AI startup? Drop us a line at ai@obvious.com

Special thanks to Kahini Shah, Pablo Ducru, and Jonathan Raiman