AI Ethics & Governance Map Launches

CASBS at Stanford Univ.
3 min readJun 27, 2019

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Fluxus Landscape, a CASBS partnership with Şerife Wong, lends a nuanced perspective to a rapidly growing and complex field. Users are encouraged to edit and build upon the work. Research meets art.

As the AI industry grows, so do the voices concerned with its ethics and governance. Keeping up with the increasing number of organizations, stakeholders, and projects addressing these problems globally can be difficult. The rapid speed of innovation driving industry and policy dialogue amplifies the complexity of AI ethics and governance still further.

Fluxus Landscape: An Expansive View of AI Ethics and Governance is an art and research project by Şerife Wong, created in partnership with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University with support from The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). The project maps and categorizes about 500 AI ethics and governance stakeholders and actors. Its goals are both practical and artistic: to help the global community interested in AI ethics and governance discover new organizations, and encourage a broader, more nuanced perspective on the AI ethics and governance landscape.

For the purposes of this project, AI ethics and governance includes private and public actors working on: fairness, transparency, and accountability; governance, national frameworks, and labor disruption; societal impacts in issue areas such as privacy, criminal justice, and human and civil rights; AI safety, security, and control; and advocacy, collaboration, and democratization initiatives. A small number of actors — primarily artists — whose work demonstrates creative exploration in AI ethics are also included. “AI for good” companies or organizations advocating for the beneficial use of AI are not included unless they also work on harmful societal impacts (real and potential) of AI. Educational programs, such as those featuring classes on AI ethics, are not included; those educating underrepresented groups in AI are included if the organization’s mission statement centers on education as part of an ethical goal.

Fluxus Landscape enables users to explore AI ethics consultancies, ethics initiatives at tech companies, governing bodies, AI governance task forces, AI legislation, university research centers, and significant conferences. Innovative and creative initiatives in civil society are especially well represented through a selection of trade associations, non-profits, worker movements, grassroots activist groups, artists, and more. The artist prompts audiences to consider and question where they draw their own boundaries concerning groups that should be included in AI policy conversations. Navigating the map reveals organizations with divergent political and economic agendas demonstrating complex tensions and the difficulties of finding consensus in AI ethics and governance.

The map was created on network mapping platform Kumu and was edited and refined with feedback from over 20 individuals from a variety of sectors. It is shared publicly through Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0 and encourages collaboration and building upon the work. Kumu users may make a replica of the map and edit or add their own data for analytical studies. https://icarus.kumu.io/fluxus-landscape

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CASBS at Stanford Univ.
CASBS at Stanford Univ.

Written by CASBS at Stanford Univ.

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University casbs.stanford.edu

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