Ethics, Professional Responsibility and the Developer's Judgement

All courses / AI Developer / Module 5 / Chapter 25

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

Explain why the chapter treats law as a floor and professional codes as insufficient on their own
Apply the five-step route of ask, record, escalate, decline and report to a doubtful request
Design checkable rules for accessibility and for bias: the gate, person and prototype rules and the proxy, counterfactual and reasons rules
Draft a values-to-rule record with a check owner independent of the generator and evidence with an expiry

Key concepts

Fairness, access and honesty: Three working categories. Fairness concerns who is counted, sorted or priced, and whether a person can contest the outcome. Access concerns who can use what is built. Honesty concerns the developer's account of the work to reviewers, colleagues, customers and the executive committee.
The escalation route: Ask what the software is for and whom it affects; record the concern and the answer; escalate to the tech lead and the owner of the delegation profile; decline in writing if the concern stands; report through the protected channel where a breach of law or danger remains.
An agent does not decline: A model generates and executes within a mandate and does not weigh a request against a value. The refusal that a developer might have made must therefore be designed into the mandate, the gate and the named owner, or responsibility lands on the person nearest the system.
Proxy, counterfactual and reasons rules: For every function that sorts, ranks, prices or routes people: the specification states which attributes may be used and which are proxies; the verification plan includes tests that change one protected or proxy attribute; and the code produces a reason in words the person can contest.
Values-to-rule record: A one-page mapping recorded as an AI Decision Record beside the delegation profile: the value and its source, the rule in one sentence a stranger can apply, the work classes constrained, the check and its independent owner, the evidence and its expiry, and the case the rule does not cover.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Interactive exercise 1 · Put in order

The route for a request you doubt

Put the five steps of the chapter's escalation route for a doubtful request in order.

Interactive exercise 2 · Sort

Which value does the rule serve

Sort each engineering rule or practice under the value it serves in the chapter: fairness, access or honesty.

Teaching plan

10 min	The teacher asks for a request each participant once hesitated to build, and sorts the answers under fairness, access and honesty.
20 min	Lecture on the professional codes and their limits, the case from the record, the five-step route and what changes when an agent is in the loop.
10 min	Case discussion: the request at Hansa Mutual to rank broker enquiries by a derived likelihood of claim built partly on postcode, and how the proxy rule routed it.
25 min	Exercise: pairs turn one value of their organisation into an engineering rule and a check.
10 min	Pairs read out the case their rule does not cover and who would be asked.

Discussion

Nordvik Region declared its first rule in force for new and changed code only, and recorded that for inherited code the value is asserted and not shown. Why does the chapter call that an honest entry?
Disclosure is not a cure: knowing that advice came from a tool does not remove its influence. What follows for how review is organised?
The whistle-blowing instruments protect reports of breaches of listed law and not every ethical concern. What route exists in your organisation for the concerns in between?

Written exercise

Exercise · 25 minutes

Turn a value into an engineering rule and a check

Choose one value your organisation states, or fair treatment of policyholders at Hansa Mutual. Name it in the organisation's own words and cite its source. Name the point in the development loop where it is at stake. Write the rule as one sentence a stranger can apply and a tool can test; if it needs words such as appropriate or reasonable, rewrite it. Name the work classes it constrains and whether it lowers a delegation ceiling. Name the check and an owner independent of the author and the generator. Name the evidence, its record, its expiry and who looks at it. Name the case the rule does not cover and who is asked.

Deliverable: A one-page values-to-rule record with value, source, rule, work classes, check owner, evidence with expiry and the uncovered case.

Your work

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

What does the chapter say about the evidence that a professional code changes behaviour?
Show the answer
B. It is thin and not encouraging, so codes must become rules met at the point of work
The chapter observes that a code binds members and not employers, that the evidence it changes behaviour is thin, and that the one replication found suggests a code read once does not change decisions.
Which rule states that a change adding or altering an interaction pattern is tested by a person with a keyboard and a screen reader?
Show the answer
D. The person rule
Three accessibility rules follow from the instruments: the gate rule (automated checks on every citizen-facing change), the person rule (a person tests new interaction patterns) and the prototype rule for prototypes built by non-developers.
In the Hansa Mutual case of ranking broker enquiries partly on postcode, who decided whether postcode was a permissible input?
Show the answer
A. The chief risk officer's delegate, after the proxy rule routed the request to review
The developer neither refused nor built it: they asked what it was for and recorded the answer, and the proxy rule routed it to review. The decision went to the chief risk officer's delegate, not to the developer or the agent.