Responsible Autonomous Machines – Final Results

This white paper reports a summary of results from a consultation with interdisciplinary experts in and around the subject of Responsible Autonomous Machines – these are typically autonomous algorithms or applications of AI whose actions need to be explainable and governed from both a legal and ethical standpoint because they are either safety-critical or impact the lives of citizens in significant ways.

The chosen methodology for the consultation is the Delphi Method, a well-established pattern that aims to determine consensus or highlight differences through iteration from a panel of selected consultees. This consultation has resulted in 33 assertions that achieved consensus, and these are reported in this paper as key recommendations.

Several main themes have emerged from the consultation:

• Ethics (ethical implications for AI & autonomous machines and their applications);
• Transparency (considerations regarding transparency, justification and explicability of AI &

  autonomous machines’ decisions and actions);

• Regulation & Control (regulatory aspects such as law, and how AI & automated systems’ behaviour

  may be monitored and if necessary corrected or stopped);

• Social Impact (how society is impacted by AI & autonomous machines);
• Design (design-time considerations for AI & autonomous machines) and
• Responsibility (issues and considerations regarding moral and legal responsibility for scenarios

  involving AI & autonomous machines).