# Artificial Intelligence for Good, Challenges in Meeting the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals

Bernd Carsten Stahl

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Bernd Carsten Stahl. Artificial Intelligence for Good, Challenges in Meeting the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. 9ème Conférence Nationale sur les Applications Pratiques de l'Intelligence Artificielle APIA@PFIA2023, AFIA-Association Française pour l'Intelligence Artificielle; ICube-laboratoire des sciences de l'ingénieur, de l'informatique et de l'imagerie, Jul 2023, Strasbourg, France. pp.8. hal-04158786

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Submitted on 17 Jul 2023

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# Artificial Intelligence for Good, Challenges in Meeting the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals

Bernd Carsten STAHL¹

¹ University of Nottingham, School of Computer Science, UK

bernd.stahl@nottingham.ac.uk

## Résumé

Conférence invitée lors de la *Plate-Forme Intelligence Artificielle (PFIA) pour la conférence Nationale sur les Applications Pratiques de l'Intelligence Artificielle (APIA 2023)*, le 6 juillet 2023 à Strasbourg, France.

## Mots-clés

*intelligence artificielle, éthique, les objectifs de développement durable des Nations Unies*

## Abstract

Invited conference during the *Artificial Intelligence Platform (PFIA) for the National Conference on the Practical Applications of Artificial Intelligence (APIA 2023)*, July 6, 2023 in Strasbourg, France.

## Keywords

*Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals*

## 1 Presentation

A key question of the discussion of the ethics of AI is how to go beyond avoiding ethical problems and instead direct AI development and use in directions that are responsible and desirable. This challenge of positive direction of AI raises the question of criteria of what counts as morally good or socially desirable. In pluralist modern society there are few generally agreed responses to this question. However, one approach that is widely accepted is to use the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as internationally agreed values as a benchmark for social desirability to steer AI development.

In my presentation I will draw from the work undertaken in the SHERPA project www.project-sherpa.eu to describe how SDGs can be used to assess ethical qualities of AI. The SHERPA consortium undertook 10 case studies of organisational practice with regards to AI use and mapped the findings onto the SDGs. I will furthermore discuss broader challenges that arise with regards to application of development-oriented metrics such as those associated with the SDGs to a different domain such as AI development.

I will use these considerations to contextualise the overall findings and recommendations of the SHERPA project and show how an ecosystems-based approach to the ethics of

AI may help us find ways of addressing at least some of its ethical challenges. More information can be found in [3, 2, 1]

## 2 Biography

Bernd Carsten Stahl is Professor of Critical Research in Technology at the School of Computer Science of the University of Nottingham. His interests cover philosophical issues arising from the intersections of business, technology, and information. This includes ethical questions of current and emerging of ICTs, critical approaches to information systems and issues related to responsible research and innovation.

## 3 Biblio

## Références

[1] Mark Ryan, Josephina Antoniou, Laurence Brooks, Tilimbe Jiya, Kevin Macnish, and Bernd Stahl. The ethical balance of using smart information systems for promoting the united nations' sustainable development goals. *Sustainability*, 12(12), 2020.

[2] Bernd Carsten Stahl, Josephina Antoniou, Mark Ryan, Kevin Macnish, and Tilimbe Jiya. Organisational responses to the ethical issues of artificial intelligence. *AI & SOCIETY*, 37(1):23–37, Mar 2022.

[3] Bernd Carsten Stahl, Doris Schroeder, and Rowena Rodrigues. *AI for Good and the SDGs*, pages 95–106. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2023.