Thanks, guys –

it was a
DSSGx Ethics workshop pleasure
workshopping
Munich, Wednesday 23rd August with you! :)

Theresa Willem
TUM School of Medicine, Insitute for History and Ethics of Medicine
TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, STS department
Helmholtz Munich, AI consultants
Agenda
DSSGx Ethics Workshop

1. ML ethics Input
• A brief introduction to ML ethics
• ML models as sociotechnical systems
• Algorithms as opinions

2. ML ethics workshop
• Breakout session: Ethical matrices
− Sharing in plenary

3. Some more input

• Responsibility gaps

W I L L E M
4. Wrap-up & concluding discussion

T H E R E S A
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Hello!
I am Theresa

• Studied Media Science (B.A.) at the University of

Regensburg and at IHECS (Brussels) and Media
Science (M.A.) at Humboldt University Berlin

• Practical experience in the field of digital health

innovation and development

• PhD student at School of Social Science and

Technology, Technical University of Munich (TUM)
(Ruth Müller) & Research associate at TUM’s
Institute of History and Ethics in Medicine (Alena

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Buyx)

• Ethics AI consultant at Helmholtz Munich

T H E R E S A
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What is ethics?

Bildquelle: Taryn Elliott: https://www.pexels.com/de-de/foto/fruchte-avocado-zitronen-ingwer-4440169/

Ethics
Is moral theory

Morality Ethics

Why is something right or wrong?

Key questions What is right or wrong? How should I act?
Justification of moral judgments

Examples The 10 Commandments Virtue ethics, deontology, AI ethics.

"The autonomy of the "The autonomy of the patient is to be
patient is to be respected. respected because s*he is capable of

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[period]" giving consent, etc. "1)

T H E R E S A
1) Marckmann, Georg (2016): Grundlagen ethischer Entscheidungsfindung in der Medizin,
in: Ders. (Hrsg.): Praxisbuch Ethik in der Medizin. Berlin, 18-28, hier: 19.

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Biomedical ethics as precursor of ML ethics
Important events cause the discipline to emerge

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T H E R E S A
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Domain specific ethics
The goals

To provide an ethical framework that is

• simple & clear
• applicable in practice
• free of contradictions and comprehensible
• acceptable (for people with different values)
• consistent with scientific and moral principles.

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Biomedical ethics
The principles

NON
BENEFICENCE
MALEFICENCE

AUTONOMY JUSTICE

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Machine learning healthcare applications
A novel technology on the rise

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Crawford, 2021
Eubank, 2019
Zuboff 2019
O’Neill 2017
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Machine learning ethics (in healthcare)
The goals

• Make the voices of affected groups (patients,

physicians, and developers) heard
• Provide health-specific fairness metrics, impact
assessments, and other measures
• Develop structured educational content for healthcare
and machine learning curricula
• Transfer context sensitive ethical assessments into
research and development projects to incorporate

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core ethical concepts into strategic medical device
development decisions

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AI Ethics
The principles

NON TRANSPARANCY
BENEFICENCE
MALEFICENCE

AUTONOMY JUSTICE

W I L L E M
T H E R E S A
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Machine learning ethics
subtitle

Some of the material for this section is inspired by a tutorial by Blakeley H. Payne with
support from the MIT Media Lab Personal Robots Group, directed by Cynthia Breazeal.
Background image: Taryn Elliott: https://www.pexels.com/de-de/foto/fruchte-avocado-
zitronen-ingwer-4440169/
Algorithms as socio-technical systems
Definition of socio technical systems

• A socio-technical system often describes a 'thing’, that emerged because

people, technology, and their environments interact.
• For example, ML models are influenced by the decisions developers take,
who, in turn, are influenced by their environments.
• We speak of a socio-technical system to
highlight that it is still humans who
ultimately create (and are responsible
for) the effects technical systems have.

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T H E R E S A
Image source:https://www.ifib.de/en/research-areas/data-science-machine-learning-and-artificial-intelligence

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Algorithms as socio-technical systems
Algorithms as opinions

Steps to
Input change input
Output

Strawberry cake algorithm

Preheat the oven
mix flour, sugar, vanilla

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sugar, baking powder and
salt in a bowl. Add vegetable
oil and sparkling water and
stir in just briefly. […]

T H E R E S A
Real recipe: https://www.zuckerjagdwurst.com/de/rezepte/veganer-erdbeerkuchen-mit-sahne

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Ethical martices
Identifying stakeholders and their values

= what is considered important

Values
Stakeholders
Taste Nutrition Costs

Me X X X
= people who have
interests in the Baker X X
functioning of an
application
Doctor X

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Ethical martices
Identifying stakeholders and their values

Values

Stakeholders Taste Nutrition Cost

Child X

Parent X X X

Baker X X

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Doctor X

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Ethical martices
Identifying stakeholders and their values
Values

How would you formulate the task for a

Stakeholders
Taste Nutrition Cost

strawberry cake if you were Child X

• A doctor
Parent X X X
• A baker
• A parent Baker X X

• A child Doctor X

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Algorithms as socio-technical systems
Group work!

YOUR PROJECT 1

YOUR PROJECT 2

Your country’s Ministry of Health has

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set an annual goal to screen 60% of
people with diabetes for diabetic
retinopathy. Develop an AI that can
identify signs of diabetic retinopathy

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from an eye scan.

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Algorithms as socio-technical systems
Group work!

Values
For the next 20 minutes, brainstorm with your
partners ~10 stakeholders who care about

Stakeholders
Taste Nutrition Cost

the effects your ML application might have Child X

and why they care about them. Parent X X X

> Create an ethical matrix Baker X X

> & develop a task specification your Doctor X

algorithm should have.

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Crawford, 2021
Eubank, 2019
Zuboff 2019
O’Neill 2017
The human-in-the-loop

Image source: https://rocketdoctor.ca/

Responsibility – definitions
• Multi-facet term.
• Legal responsibility: often used interchangeably with liability and accountability,
explicates the legal consequences that should take effect when adverse events follow
actions (Berber & Srećković, 2023; Cornock, 2011).
• Moral responsibility: refers to “the causal responsibility of moral agents for harm in the
world and the blameworthiness that we ascribe to them for having caused such harm”
(Smiley, 2022, p. 1).
• Moral responsibility, can be
• carried alone (individual moral responsibility),
• routed within collective actions of a group of stakeholders (collective moral
responsibility),
• or distributed among multiple stakeholders (shared moral responsibility).
The Problem in AI:
Verification of the
output
Responsibility gap
Thank you!
theresa.willem@tum.de
theresa.willem@helmholtz-munich.de

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