As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems become commonplace in business and society, they are engendering complex debates concerning the ethical policies and rules that should govern their design, deployment, and power. Many big tech companies such as Google and Microsoft have articulated general principles that should guide their AI teams, but these efforts have, to date, mainly provided aspirational guidance. Moreover, even companies as rich and talented as Google have struggled when moving from general statements of intent—e.g., AI systems should not discriminate on the basis of race—to specific rules and development strategies.

Because the newness and complexity of AI systems are posing serious hurdles to technologists and ethicists, some regulators have decided they must move forward and create regulatory answers to AI's tough questions. In places as diverse as the European Union and China, 2021 has seen the proposal of new AI regulations that — in the case of the EU at least—would significantly constrain what AI developers and their customers can and cannot do with these new technologies. The pressing challenge for both private and public stakeholders in the AI ecosystem is to accelerate past today's general statements of intent to specific rules and guidelines that are consistent with social norms, goals, and established legal principles.

Seeking to support this effort is a new proposal from the Atlantic Council's Geotech Center written by John Basl (Northeastern), Ronald Sandler (Northeastern), and Steven Tiell (Accenture). Their paper provides organizations working with AI systems a framework for developing high-level statements of intent into specifics. As shown in Figure 1 below, their approach is built on the concept of normative content. As the authors note, norms come in two types. One is descriptive, i.e., describe "what is." The other form is prescriptive, i.e., they describe "what should be." One category of prescriptive norm is ethics, and ethical norms are the foundation of their model. In the context of this paper, ethical norms should serve as the foundation of "well-justified standards, principles, and practices for what individuals, groups, and organizations should do, rather than merely describing what they currently do."