Ethical principles: Societal and environmental well-being

This sub-guideline is part of the guideline Ethical principles. Refer to the main guideline for context and an overview. 

This sub-guideline explores the principle of societal and environmental well-being in AI governance for parliaments. It emphasizes that, owing to the ubiquitous nature of AI in society, this technology should be used for people’s well-being. It further stresses that applications of AI should not negatively affect people’s physical and mental well-being, or harm the environment or society at large.

Overall, this sub-guideline provides a framework for parliaments to develop and maintain AI systems that protect and promote societal and environmental well-being.

In order to ensure that AI systems promote and support societal and environmental well-being, parliaments should adopt a comprehensive approach. The components of this approach are detailed below:

• Stakeholder identification: Identify potentially impacted stakeholders (individuals, organizations and the environment) during AI system planning.

• Procurement: Prioritize environmentally responsible suppliers in AI-related public procurement exercises.

• Impact assessment: Assess the impacts of an AI system on all stakeholders throughout its life cycle.

• Feedback: Implement user feedback mechanisms to gauge an AI system’s impact on work processes.

• Citizen interaction: Ensure unbiased and accurate AI interactions with citizens.

• Misinformation: Check AI-generated communication outputs for misinformation.

The Guidelines for AI in parliaments are published by the IPU in collaboration with the Parliamentary Data Science Hub in the IPU’s Centre for Innovation in Parliament. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence. It may be freely shared and reused with acknowledgement of the IPU. For more information about the IPU’s work on artificial intelligence, please visit www.ipu.org/AI or contact [email protected].