Specific challenges posed by artificial intelligence in research ethics

The twenty first century is often defined as the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which raises many questions regarding its impact on society. It is already significantly changing many practices in different fields. Research ethics (RE) is no exception. Many challenges, including responsibility, privacy, and transparency, are encountered. Research ethics boards (REB) have been established to ensure that ethical practices are adequately followed during research projects. This scoping review aims to bring out the challenges of AI in research ethics and to investigate if REBs are equipped to evaluate them.

Three electronic databases were selected to collect peer-reviewed articles that fit the inclusion criteria (English or French, published between 2016 and 2021, containing AI, RE, and REB). Two instigators independently reviewed each piece by screening with Covidence and then coding with NVivo.

From having a total of 657 articles to review, we were left with a final sample of 28 relevant papers for our scoping review. The selected literature described AI in research ethics (i.e., views on current guidelines, key ethical concept and approaches, key issues of the current state of AI-specific RE guidelines) and REBs regarding AI (i.e., their roles, scope and approaches, key practices and processes, limitations and challenges, stakeholder perceptions). However, the literature often described REBs ethical assessment practices of projects in AI research as lacking knowledge and tools.

Ethical reflections are taking a step forward while normative guidelines adaptation to AI's reality is still dawdling. This impacts REBs and most stakeholders involved with AI. Indeed, REBs are not equipped enough to adequately evaluate AI research ethics and require standard guidelines to help them do so.