Guidelines for Morally Sound Artificial Intelligence
In a significant move towards ensuring fairness and transparency in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the UNI Global Union has unveiled its Top Ten Principles for Ethical AI. These principles are aimed at protecting workers' rights and promoting fairness, transparency, accountability, and respect for human dignity in workplace technology.
The principles come in response to the increasing use of technologies such as AI, robotics, data, and machine learning in workplaces worldwide. As these technologies displace and disrupt jobs, it is essential to maintain a balance of power in workplaces, and the new principles aim to do just that.
The Top Ten Principles for Ethical AI provide concrete demands for unions, encouraging them to get involved in the context of AI integration. The principles are intended for inclusion in various agreements, such as collective agreements, industrial policies, and Global Framework Agreements.
The Top Ten Principles for Ethical AI focus on establishing ethical standards for AI deployment. Key areas of emphasis include protection against bias and discrimination in AI systems, transparency in automated decision-making impacting workers, accountability for AI developers and employers, and respect for workers’ privacy and control over their data.
In addition to the Top Ten Principles for Ethical AI, UNI Global Union has also introduced the Ten Principles for Workers' Data Rights. These principles are aimed at safeguarding workers' interests regarding their data. The workers’ data rights principles typically include informed consent and control over personal and workplace data, transparency about how worker data is collected, used, and shared, and mechanisms for accountability and redress.
Both sets of principles aim to safeguard workers in the digital economy, particularly regarding data generated by or about them. The workers’ data rights principles focus specifically on data governance—privacy, consent, transparency, security—while the Top Ten Principles for Ethical AI integrate these with wider concerns including fairness, autonomy, accountability, and sustainability.
Together, these principles form a comprehensive framework aiming to ensure that AI advances in workplaces do not undermine workers' fundamental rights but instead foster ethical, inclusive, and just labor environments.
In essence, the Top Ten Principles for Ethical AI and the Ten Principles for Workers' Data Rights serve as complementary pillars of ethical technology governance in labor contexts. By combining ethical AI frameworks with robust data rights protections specifically tailored to workers, UNI Global Union is leading the charge in ensuring a fair and equitable digital future for workers everywhere.
- The Top Ten Principles for Ethical AI, which include the protection against bias and discrimination in AI systems, transparency in automated decision-making, accountability for AI developers, and respect for workers’ privacy, aim to ensure that AI advancements in workplaces promote fairness, autonomy, and accountability, thereby fostering an ethical and just labor environment.
- In the digital economy, where technologies such as AI, robotics, data, and machine learning are increasingly displacing jobs, the UNI Global Union's Ten Principles for Workers' Data Rights offer safeguards by emphasizing informed consent, transparency, security, and control over personal and workplace data, thereby ensuring a fair and equitable digital future for workers everywhere.
