A principles-based ethics assurance argument pattern for AI and autonomous systems

An assurance case is a structured argument, typically produced by safety engineers, to communicate confidence that a critical or complex system, such as an aircraft, will be acceptably safe within its intended context. Assurance cases often inform third party approval of a system. One emerging proposition within the trustworthy AI and autonomous systems (AI/AS) research community is to use assurance cases to instil justified confidence that specific AI/AS will be ethically acceptable when operational in well-defined contexts. This paper substantially develops the proposition and makes it concrete. It brings together the assurance case methodology with a set of ethical principles to structure a principles-based ethics assurance argument pattern. The principles are justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, and respect for human autonomy, with the principle of transparency playing a supporting role. The argument pattern—shortened to the acronym PRAISE—is described. The objective of the proposed PRAISE argument pattern is to provide a reusable template for individual ethics assurance cases, by which engineers, developers, operators, or regulators could justify, communicate, or challenge a claim about the overall ethical acceptability of the use of a specific AI/AS in a given socio-technical context. We apply the pattern to the hypothetical use case of an autonomous ‘robo-taxi’ service in a city centre.