2022/05/08 by Shalaleh Rismani, Rismani, Shalaleh, AJung Moon +1 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Medicine · Social Sciences · #Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning #Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #FOS: Computer and information sciences
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2205.03946
openalex publication_date 2022/05/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
With the growing need to regulate AI systems across a wide variety of application domains, a new set of occupations has emerged in the industry. The so-called responsible AI practitioners or AI ethicists are generally tasked with interpreting and operationalizing best practices for ethical and safe design of AI systems. Due to the nascent nature of these roles, however, it is unclear to future employers and aspiring AI ethicists what specific function these roles serve and what skills are necessary to serve the functions. Without clarity on these, we cannot train future AI ethicists with meaningful learning objectives. In this work, we examine what responsible AI practitioners do in the industry and what skills they employ on the job. We propose an ontology of existing roles alongside skills and competencies that serve each role. We created this ontology by examining the job postings for such roles over a two-year period (2020-2022) and conducting expert interviews with fourteen individuals who currently hold such a role in the industry. Our ontology contributes to business leaders looking to build responsible AI teams and provides educators with a set of competencies that an AI ethics curriculum can prioritize.