Ethics & Society team

Exploring the real-world impacts of AI

Ethics & Society

As scientists and practitioners, we take responsibility for investigating the impacts of our work.

Overview

Securing safe, accountable, and socially beneficial technology cannot be an afterthought. With the right focus on ethical standards and safety, we have better chances of finding AI’s potential benefits. By researching the ethical and social questions involving AI, we ensure these topics remain at the heart of everything we do.

Social purpose

We start from the belief that AI should be used for socially beneficial purposes and always remain under meaningful human control. Understanding what this means in practice is essential.  

Finding ways to involve the broader society in our work is fundamental to our mission, so partnerships with others in the field of AI ethics is a crucial element of our approach.

We embrace scientific values like transparency, freedom of thought, and the equality of access, and we deeply respect the independence and academic integrity of our researchers and partners.

Our work

Questions about AI extend far beyond its technology. Through our partnerships, we’ve created public lectures, forums, and resources to better understand the societal impacts of AI. Below are some of our recent highlights.

Launching public lectures

We partnered with the Royal Society on a free public lecture and panel series, You & AI. These lectures, featuring experts like Kate Crawford and Joseph Stiglitz, explored AI’s capabilities, future directions, and potential societal effects. Each lecture was recorded and is available to watch online.

Engaging citizens directly

Together with the RSA, we created the Forum for Ethical AI, a public engagement programme for discussing the use of automated decision-making tools. During this forum, citizen participants developed a critical framework for addressing transparency, accountability, and accessibility of AI technology.

Convening experts

In partnership with Princeton University, we organised a workshop to explore how criminal justice systems use AI technology. We brought together technologists and advocates to discuss solutions and create resources, directly informed by affected communities, which explore the harm that can be caused by predictive tools.

Themes

We want to promote research that ensures AI works for all. Our research themes are designed to reflect the key ethical challenges that exist for us and the wider AI community. We undertake research and collaborations in each of these areas, determined by the urgent challenges ahead.

Privacy, transparency, and fairness

AI systems can use large-scale and sometimes sensitive datasets, such as medical or criminal justice records. This raises important questions about protecting people’s privacy and ensuring that they understand how their data is used. Also, the data used for training automated decision-making systems can contain biases, creating systems that might discriminate against certain groups of people. 

  • How do concepts such as consent and ownership relate to using data in AI systems? 
  • What can AI researchers do to detect and minimise the effects of bias?
  • What policies and tools allow meaningful audits of AI systems and their data?

Fellows

Our fellows are independent advisors that help provide critical feedback and guidance. These research fellows not only bring expertise but also their values and capacity for asking challenging questions. Engaging with world-class philosophers, economists, and practitioners help us better understand the implications of AI, keeping us focused on questions that matter.

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Nick Bostrom

Professor at the University of Oxford, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute and the Governance of Artificial Intelligence Program

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Professor Diane Coyle

Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge

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Professor Edward W Felten

Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs, Founding Director of Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy

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James Manyika

Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company and Chair of the McKinsey Global Institute

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Professor Jeffrey D Sachs

Professor of Economics, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and Senior UN Advisor

Partners

Collaboration, diversity of thought, and meaningful public engagement are key if we are to develop and apply AI for maximum benefit. The Ethics & Society team works with a variety of partners in an effort to support and learn from the broadest possible viewpoints, creating space for interdisciplinary collaboration that can approach complex challenges in creative ways. We will always be open about who we work with and what projects we fund. All of our research grants will be unrestricted and we will never attempt to influence or pre-determine the outcome of studies we commission. When we collaborate or co-publish with external researchers, we will disclose whether they have received funding from us.

Article 36

Article 36 is a non-profit organisation working to prevent harm caused by certain weapons. Led by Richard Moyes, previously co-chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, it is a founding member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. The organisation developed the concept of “meaningful human control” as an approach to guide international discussions on autonomous weapons systems. Article 36 is also part of the steering group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and has led efforts to establish the impact of explosive weapons in populated areas as an international humanitarian priority. Previously, Richard established and managed explosive ordnance disposal projects for the UK NGO Mines Advisory Group. He is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Exeter and serves on the Aviation Futures policy panel of the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority. We have worked with Article 36 to explore the risks of intelligent systems in international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

Find out more

Team profile

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Verity Harding
Head of Policy & Partnerships

Verity has worked as a special adviser in the UK government and as head of security policy for Google Europe.

Verity and her team work to understand the ethical and societal impacts of AI, and build multi-stakeholder approaches to address them.

“The quality of debate and diversity of those involved is as critical to the future of artificial intelligence as the science behind it.”

Team profile

Sean Legassick 
Head of Ethics Research

Sean’s background is in software engineering, AI, and sociology, with a long-standing interest in how technology and society interact and shape our world.

Sean focuses on finding the best ways for contributing philosophy and social science expertise to the ethical advancement of AI research and development.

“We have an unprecedented opportunity at DeepMind to collaborate with the world’s best AI researchers for addressing complex ethical challenges.”

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Brittany Smith 
Policy & Ethics Researcher

Brittany is a policy researcher, focused on understanding the social impact of AI technology. She has worked on policy and government affairs at Google.

Brittany creates public engagement programmes and partnerships, helping DeepMind approach difficult challenges in creative and interdisciplinary ways.

“I'm proud of supporting the wider AI community, bringing people together to expand our collective understanding of AI’s real-world impacts.”

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Iason Gabriel
Senior Research Scientist

Iason is a political theorist and philosopher by training. Before joining DeepMind he worked for the United Nations and also taught politics at Oxford University for a number of years.

Iason’s work focuses on how to ensure that the systems we build are aligned with human values. He also teaches ethics to researchers at DeepMind.

“We aim to build safe and ethical AI systems. It’s great to be somewhere people think seriously not only about what they build but why, as well as the wider social purpose of technology.”

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Jennifer Bernal
Public Policy Manager

Jennifer has worked at the intersection of public policy and technology for a decade. She previously managed Google’s policy strategy for media and intellectual property in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Jennifer works with with governments and the policy community, supporting discussions about the governance of new technologies and ensuring that public interests in creating safe and ethical AI are reflected in DeepMind’s research. 

“As a society, we have yet to figure out what governance systems will help maximise the benefits of AI, and minimise its risks. DeepMind continuously reflects on this question and I am excited to help advance this conversation.”