---
id: "aiethics:lecture/ethics-applied-to-ai"
type: "AI Ethics course lecture"
title: "Ethics Applied to AI: A Matter of Cultures and Words"
url: "https://aiethicscourse.org/lectures/ethics-applied-to-ai"
authors: ["Emmanuel R. Goffi"]
summary: "This lecture aims to offer some critical insights to dive deeper into the intricacies of EA2AI and to stress the need for both awareness towards the ‘AI ethics’ narrative and serious consideration for cultural perspectives."
source: "AI Ethics: Global Perspectives (aiethicscourse.org)"
licence: "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)"
---

# Ethics Applied to AI: A Matter of Cultures and Words

A lecture of the course [AI Ethics: Global Perspectives](https://aiethicscourse.org/).

## Lecturer

- Emmanuel R. Goffi, Co-Founder and Co-Director, Global AI Ethics Institute

## About this lecture

‘AI ethics’ has become a highly debated topic. Yet, looking closely, it appears that despite the quantity of discussions on the subject, their quality remains poor. The narrative surrounding ‘AI ethics’ (we prefer ethics applied to AI - EA2AI) is henceforth repeated without questioning its relevance and its applicability across diverse cultural contexts. This lack of critical thinking has inevitably opened the door to norms entrepreneurs, mostly from the Global North, are shaping to promote and protect their own interests, introducing a cultural bias in the debate. This lecture aims to offer some critical insights to dive deeper into the intricacies of EA2AI and to stress the need for both awareness towards the ‘AI ethics’ narrative and serious consideration for cultural perspectives.

## Video and transcript

- Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu696mC19SI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu696mC19SI)
- Transcript (PDF): [https://aiethicscourse.org/img/a0dbc1a3-261f-4672-846b-4352aea40542.pdf](https://aiethicscourse.org/img/a0dbc1a3-261f-4672-846b-4352aea40542.pdf)

## Read, watch, and listen

- [The Global Landscape of AI Ethics Guidelines](https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-019-0088-2), Jobin, A., Ienca, M. and Vayena, E. The global landscape of AI ethics guidelines. Nature Machine Intelligence 1, 389-399 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-019-0088-2.
- [What Buddhism can do for AI Ethics](https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/06/1015779/what-buddhism-can-do-ai-ethics/), Hongladarom, S. What Buddhism can do for AI ethics. MIT Technology Review. January 6, 2021. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/06/1015779/what-buddhism-can-do-ai-ethics/.
- [Islamic Ethics of Technology: An Objectives (Maqasid) Approach](https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Islamic_Ethics_of_Technology.html?id=G432BwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y), Raquib, Amana. Islamic Ethics of Technology: An Objectives (Maqasid) Approach. The Other Press, 2015.
- [The Global AI Ethics Institute](https://globalethics.ai/)