Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab
Visiting Fellow

New Tools for Ethical Risk Analysis and Risk Mitigation in the Use of AI
Principal Investigator: Marianna Bergamaschi Ganapini, assistant professor of philosophy

As a Visiting Fellow in the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab, PI Bergamaschi Ganapini's research will focus on the following questions: How can organizations determine which risks their Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses to people and society? And how can they find actionable ways to address and prevent those risks?

The PI will address these questions by producing a practical, step-by-step tool that will guide companies through risk assessment and mitigation connected to their use of AI. She will use a methodology that draws from philosophy and ethical theory and the work already being done in AI ethics auditing. Current risk assessment practices primarily focus on the organization and production pipeline or life-cycle of an AI system and zoom in on specific structural and design elements of these systems. As a result, they are technology-specific and not generalizable.

The PI's research takes a novel approach by examining AI systems on a more abstract, ethnically relevant level, where moral choices and actions occur and ethical consequences emerge. This approach may be more generalizable, as it can be applied wherever and whenever morally relevant macro-structures in which AI systems are immersed are present.