Ethical Impact Assessment
It's all about trust.
Our Ethical Impact Assessment is the best way to start an AI initiative or project: it will present the right questions to guide your project towards a solid ethical stance and improve your stakeholders' trust in your organisation.
ETHICRITICAL has been featured in The Times newspaper
Why an Ethical Impact Assessment?
Look at the jigsaw next to this text. It has been created using AI. It looks good at first sight, but then you can see it includes a number of approximations, and some issues in its linkages.
The ethical impact of your AI initiative is very much like this jigsaw: AI may bring some issues, which may be difficult to see at first, and could have severe consequences. Furthermore, how is your initiative (this jigsaw) going to fit into a wider context (think about putting this bit into another, bigger, 3D jigsaw...)?
An Ethical Impact Assessment highlights important consequences which may be risks to your development and reputation, and affect the trust in your brand.
How do I make the most of this assessment ?
Every organisation is different, and has its own characteristics. We invite you to get in touch first of all to discuss what you expect from the assessment and we can explore together what areas may be most useful to you, where this exercise brings the highest benefit.
We can then prepare an Assessment Plan for you to consider. It will contain the assessment's deliverables and description (including the requirements on your organisation).
Up to this point, this is a completely free service, and you may decide whether you wish to go ahead, hold off, or further adjust the assessment scope for you.
What is in the assessment?
The assessment aims to ask "the right questions" to guide your development and follow an "Ethical by Design" approach. The delivery is articulated as follows:
- We explore your organisation's own values and drivers, this involves a few interviews and a review of your strategies, policies and publications.
- We evaluate your initiative(s) following our structured approach which covers up to 7 research themes, each with a number of sub-themes composing your ethical position. This is done through reviewing documents, observations and interviews.
- We deliver a report showing your "ethical level" ranging from 0 to 5 across each of the 7 themes. The report includes observations based on recorded evidence. The level is supplemented by "what it means for your organisation" and may include related risks and proposed mitigations.
- Based on these observations, we present a set of recommendations into an improvement plan, taking you from your current ethical position to where you want your organisation to be.
It's all about trust!
Interested in adopting an "Ethical by design" approach? We are here to help!
Contact us to discuss how our detailed and comprehensive Ethical Impact Assessment will help reduce your reputational risk and improve trust in your brand.
