The Third Moment of AI Ethics: Developing Relatable and Contextualized Tools
Sarah Hladikova, Yuling Wang, Andreia Martinho
TL;DR
The paper addresses the gap between AI ethics guidelines and practical software development. It introduces the Third Moment of AI Ethics and builds an AI Ethics Tool, grounded in the Morley Typology and extended with the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, to translate normative principles into concrete, domain-specific guidance. The tool is open-source (MIT-licensed) and structured around the development pipeline, with a domain tab for autonomous driving and a semantic-search interface. A proof-of-concept study in autonomous driving plus a practitioner survey suggest the tool is relatable and potentially useful, but feedback calls for more examples and detailed instructions. Overall, the work provides a concrete bridge from normative ethics to actionable engineering practice and advocates for collaborative, domain-focused refinement to enhance adoption.
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) ethics has gained significant momentum, evidenced by the growing body of published literature, policy guidelines, and public discourse. However, the practical implementation and adoption of AI ethics principles among practitioners has not kept pace with this theoretical development. Common barriers to adoption include overly abstract language, poor accessibility, and insufficient practical guidance for implementation. Through participatory design with industry practitioners, we developed an open-source tool that bridges this gap. Our tool is firmly grounded in normative ethical frameworks while offering concrete, actionable guidance in an intuitive format that aligns with established software development workflows. We validated this approach through a proof of concept study in the United States autonomous driving industry.