Ethics, Data and Privacy Management for AI Solutions in Manufacturing at SMEs (AIRISE)

Ethics has become an increasingly important topic within the development of Artificial Intelligence systems. The anticipated European AI act has a strong foundation in 7 ethical values of the Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ALTAI): human agency and oversight, technical robustness and safety, privacy and data governance, transparency, diversity, non-discrimination and fairness, environmental and societal wellbeing, and accountability. In addition, data management and privacy are other important aspects of responsible AI: from development towards implementation. In many research fields, a form of ethical management or review is common practice. However, in the field of AI and manufacturing this is relatively new.Within the EU project: Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing for Sustainability at SMEs (AIRISE), AI experts will support SMEs active in manufacturing, in the uptake of AI by conducting tailor-made experiments. One requirement for these experiments is the management of ethics, data and privacy. At the same time, AIRISE will also deliver this as a service to SMEs. Ethics management allows for reflection on business processes, safe working and possible improvements.This work presents our way of service delivery, tutoring, training modules and review procedure, based on the ALTAI principles, GDPR and FAIR principles. Our work lays the foundations for compliance to multiple EU legislations such as the AI act and GDPR, delivered in a user-friendly service. In the nearby future, we anticipate optimizing our ethics, privacy and data management services by developing digital tooling. Furthermore, we will thematically analyze the obtained data and identify which ethical issues are important for SMEs and manufacturing. With this knowledge, we aim to further support manufacturing SMEs in their business.