How AI Can Be a Force for Good – An Ethical Framework to Harness the Potential of AI While Keeping Humans in Control

The article has the goal of indicating how to harness the potential for good of artificial intelligence (AI) – defined as a distinct form of autonomous and self- learning agency and thus raises unique ethical challenges – while mitigating its ethical challenges. The analyses focuses first on uses of AI that may lead to undue discrimination, lack of explainability, the responsibility gap, and the nudging potential of AI and its negative impact on human self-determination. It then turns on the role that ethical analyses in harnessing the potential for good of AI and argues that existing guidelines for the ethics design, development and use of AI will be effective insofar as they are translated into viable guidelines to shape AI-based innovation and that this is the task of digital ethics as a translational ethics.