AHRC Explore the Impact of Artificial Intelligence Ethics on Workplaces

Funding available to research how ethical artificial intelligence (AI) frameworks affect workplace culture.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is looking to fund early research, sometimes called ‘pump-priming’. AHRC will fund collaborative projects that undertake preliminary research and scoping on the impact of AI ethics frameworks on workplace culture.

These projects should develop partnerships or networks to test assumptions and identify future research questions in this field.

Projects should lay the groundwork for longer-term, in-depth ethnographic studies of different workplaces. However, alternative methodologies will be considered that yield the outputs and outcomes required.

The subsequent research is intended to help bridge the gap between principle, process and practice within AI ethics and sectors developing or using AI and data-driven technologies.

Outputs should aim to frame research questions and challenges to inform future humanities-led investment in responsible AI.

Projects might focus on areas including but not limited to:

• Exploring the extent to which current organisational behaviour is influenced (or not) by the adoption of formal ethics codes or principles
• Testing how workplace culture impacts on the adoption, format and use of ethical frameworks
• Surveying the differences in approach between or within organisations operating in sectors which have formally adopted such codes or standards and those which have not
• Forging innovative and ambitious new partnerships between researchers and organisations working in the AI and data ethics space

Projects should focus on organisations currently developing or using AI or data-driven technology, but they may refer to relevant historical comparisons.