Governance mechanisms for community well-being in AI development

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With PwC’s Indigenous Consulting Co-CEO, Gavin Brown, we wrote a perspective article around how you might set up different types of contract terms and governance structures to better ensure community wellbeing of Indigenous populations when developing AI projects. This has been published in the International Journal of Community Wellbeing Special Issue on AI.

Termination for cultural misalignment: setting up contract terms to ensure community well-being in the development of AI

A contractual mechanism to protect and amplify the interests of Indigenous community wellbeing in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that affects them is investigated. Our
proposal explores the need for a legal mechanism that recognizes the importance of cultural
knowledge and ways of being and doing, acknowledging that these can be in tension with the
(potentially myopic) goals of AI development. We outline the pre-conditions for such a legal
mechanism to be possible, including some of the core components that could give rise to a
termination for cultural misalignment, as well as the supporting types of governance structures
and operating principles such a legal mechanism may engender. We discuss how the
establishment of such a mechanism in contracts forces procurers of AI technology development
services, and therefore developers of AI technology systems themselves, to adopt and enact
principles by which they will work to protect and enable community well-being, thereby
instigating important behavior change. Consideration is given to the types of knowledge, skills
and training that would be required to implement such a mechanism successfully. This essay has a particular emphasis on working to ensure Indigenous community well-being in the
development of AI, however there are also applications for other communities.

Keywords: Community well-being, Indigenous, Contracts, Governance, Collaboration,
AI

An Author-Accepted Manuscript can be found at the link below:

Ruster, L.P & Brown, G. 2020, ‘Termination for cultural misalignment: setting up contract terms to ensure community well-being in the development of AI’, International Journal of Community Wellbeing: Special Issue AI (pre-press, Author Accepted Manuscript)Download

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in International Journal of Community Wellbeing: Special Issue on AI. The final authenticated version is available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42413-020-00081-8 .