Abstract
AbstractArtificial Intelligence (AI) systems are increasing in significance within software services. Unfortunately, these systems are not flawless. Their faults, failures and other systemic issues have emphasized the urgency for consideration of ethical standards and practices in AI engineering. Despite the growing number of studies in AI ethics, comparatively little attention has been placed on how ethical issues can be mitigated in software engineering (SE) practice. Currently understanding is lacking regarding the provision of useful tools that can help companies transform high-level ethical guidelines for AI ethics into the actual workflow of developers. In this paper, we explore the idea of using user stories to transform abstract ethical requirements into tangible outcomes in Agile software development. We tested this idea by studying master’s level student projects (15 teams) developing web applications for a real industrial client over the course of five iterations. These projects resulted in 250+ user stories that were analyzed for the purposes of this paper. The teams were divided into two groups: half of the teams worked using the ECCOLA method for AI ethics in SE, while the other half, a control group, was used to compare the effectiveness of ECCOLA. Both teams were tasked with writing user stories to formulate customer needs into system requirements. Based on the data, we discuss the effectiveness of ECCOLA, and Primary Empirical Contributions (PECs) from formulating ethical user stories in Agile development.
Highlights
During recent years, the role of ethics has been emphasized in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Autonomous Systems (AS)
ECCOLA is a method for implementing AI ethics, which we have presented in an existing paper [10] and briefly above
As discussed in the study design section, we collected 298 user stories from 15 student teams. These teams were split into two groups: group Y and group X
Summary
The role of ethics has been emphasized in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Autonomous Systems (AS). Aligned AI/AS development principles and guidelines exist [1], yet as recent research demonstrates [2], there are still major challenges in translating these to practice. Miller and Larson [4], on human values in Agile software development, highlighted the importance of developers acquiring an awareness of and skill in performing ethical analysis. This was in order to be able to evaluate development methods on a more sophisticated level. Miller and Larson [4] call for tools of ethical analysis; they propose that parties involved in software development need intellectual skills and a vocabulary that will help them understand and communicate competing human duties, values and consequences
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
