Exploring AI ethics in global contexts: a culturally responsive, psychologically realist approach

AI is a global technology with tremendous potential consequences. As such, it is important that AI technologies be developed and implemented in an ethical manner, which depends on understanding and responding to global, cross-cultural ethical perspectives. Unfortunately, on the one hand, many AI ethics initiatives reflect cultural biases, as they are often grounded in ethical values, principles, and frameworks that may not fully capture the diversity of global populations. On the other hand, current attempts to debias AI face challenges, as they are often based on unrealistic psychological assumptions about how people think about and behave regarding AI and ethics. Instead, we argue that a culturally responsive, psychologically realist approach to AI ethics is needed for the responsible advancement and adoption of AI in global contexts. Such an approach depends on understanding how people from diverse backgrounds think about issues of right and wrong and behave (psychologically realist), and how culture affects these judgments and behaviors (culturally responsive). This can be achieved by using empirical insights and methodologies from the behavioral and social sciences associated with moral psychology.