An Exploratory Study on the Research Trend of Artificial Intelligence Ethics

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the research trends related to artificial intelligence ethics published in the existing academic area. To achieve this aim we set two research questions. First question is “What is the trend of artificial intelligence ethics research?”, And second question is “What are the recent issues of artificial intelligence ethics research?”. And second question is “what are the recent issues of artificial intelligence ethics research?”. This study introduced two analyses methods to solve these problems. One is trend analysis of research topics, research methods, and keyword analysis, including bibliographic information. The other is an analysis of major issues presented in recently published papers. The data analysis period of this study analyzed trends from 2016 to June 2021, targeting 68 papers in journals under the theme of ‘Artificial Intelligence Ethics’ The reason why it was based on 2016 is that artificial intelligence ethics became a hot topic in academia at this time. In addition, for the recent analysis of major issues, 9 papers published from 2020 to June 2021 were analyzed. The results of first research question were as follows: First, academic journal papers on the subject of artificial intelligence ethics are increasing every year, and are gradually expanding to various academic departments starting in fields such as ethics and law. Second, research in the fields of public administration and policy was insufficient, and research on artificial intelligence ethics has not been actively conducted, especially for administrative and policy experts. Third, the most frequent subjects were relation between human and artificial intelligence, and theme about artificial intelligence technologies. The results of second research question were as follows: The main issue is the concept and discussion trend of artificial intelligence ethics. Second is relation between artificial intelligence and human ethics. Third is artificial intelligence expert ethics. And fourth is artificial intelligence ethics education.