Introducing Institute for Experiential AI Ethics Advisory Board

The Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University is launching the world’s first on-demand, independent AI ethics advisory board to help organizations develop and deploy AI responsibly, meeting the growing demand for independent ethical guidance. A qualified and customized ethics board requires many different highly specialized skill sets. The AIEB expert group includes more than 40 inaugural experts from multiple disciplines across academia and industry, securing broad representation, diversity, and access to all relevant expertise. The core of the AIEB expert group is composed of Northeastern University faculty members, combined with a high number of experts from external organizations and key industry stakeholders. The aim is to serve the growing demand for ethics guidance in a professional and efficient manner.

This global initiative will provide hands-on, independent, ethical guidance to help organizations, institutions, government bodies, etc. to develop and deploy AI responsibly. The AI Ethics Board aims to fill the current lack of ethical expertise in AI today, and draws its members from leading academic institutions, companies, and organizations, including the likes of Northeastern University (NU), Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, MIT, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Honeywell, and many more.

How does the AIEB operate?

When applying AI to new disciplines, unique challenges arise to ensure the technology works ethically. The AI Ethics Board deploys a small multidisciplinary team of experts with relevant experience for every project. The AIEB operates on-demand and in subsets depending on the expertise needed to resolve the requests received from the organizations. Each request for an advisory board will be analyzed and formally accepted by the board chairs, but they may decline the request if they identify a conflict of interest or have ethical concerns.

• • Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Northeastern Univ. (USA, co-chair)

  • Cansu Canca, Northeastern Univ. (USA, co-chair)

  • Silvio Amir, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Yakov Bart, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • John Basl, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Brian Berkey, University of Pennsylvania (USA)

  • Joanna Bryson, Hertie School (Germany)

  • Erdogan Cesmeli, Honeywell (USA)

  • Kwong Chan, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Bethany Edmunds, Northeastern Univ. (Canada)

  • Elena Esposito, University of Bielefeld / University of Bologna (Germany/Italy)

  • Tamiko Eto, Kaiser Permanente (USA)

  • Sina Fazelpour, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Gemma Galdón-Clavell, Eticas Consulting (Spain)

  • Rayid Ghani, Carnegie Mellon University (USA)

  • Karina Gibert, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain)

  • Abhishek Gupta, Montreal AI Ethics (Canada)

  • Laura Haaber Ihle, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Patricia Illingworth, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Ayse Kaya, Slim.ai (USA)

  • Leyla Keser, Bilgi University (Turkey)

  • Alessandro Lanteri, ESCP Business School (Italy)

  • Dave Lewis, Redgrave Data (USA)

  • Ramón López de Mantaras, IIIA (Spain)

  • Momin Malik, Mayo Clinic (USA)

  • Jeanna Matthews, Clarkson University (USA)

  • Eden Medina, MIT (USA)

  • Sabelo Mhlambi, Harvard University (USA)

  • Wanda Muñoz, SEHLAC (México)

  • Koen Pauwels, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Cristina Pombo, IADB (USA)

  • Benjamin Prud’homme, MILA (Canada)

  • Susanna Raj, AI4Nomads (USA)

  • Chiara Renso, CNR (Italy)

  • Albert Ali Salah, Utrecht University (Netherlands)

  • Ronald Sandler, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Alejandro Saucedo, The Institute for Ethical AI (UK)

  • Saiph Savage, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Marija Slavkovik, Bergen University (Norway)

  • Julia Stoyanovich, New York University (USA)

  • Gregor Strojin, CAHAI (Slovenia)

  • Melanie Tory, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

  • Dan Wikler, Harvard University (USA)

  • Christo Wilson, Northeastern Univ. (USA)

Tamiko Eto, Research Compliance, Technology Risk, Privacy, and IRB Manager, Kaiser Permanente, said, “The use of AI-enabled tools in healthcare and beyond requires a deep understanding of the potential consequences. Any implementation must be evaluated in the context of bias, privacy, fairness, diversity and a variety of other factors, with input from multiple groups with context-specific expertise. I’m excited to offer my insight to the AI Ethics Board at Northeastern to help serve the growing demand for regulatory and ethical guidance and human subjects research protections.”

The Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University researches and develops human-centric AI solutions that leverage machine technology to extend human intelligence.

The Institute works with academic and industry partners to establish guidelines for AI ethics governance mechanisms, translate abstract values into practical guiding principles, and instal[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]l ethics training for AI practitioners. The Institute offers a suite of Responsible AI services, which includes the AIEB.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]