Introducing Ethical by Design: Good Technology Principles for AI 

There’s a particular kind of vertigo that comes from watching a technology reshape the world faster than our frameworks can keep up. We’ve been here before with the internet, social media, and the smartphone. Each time, the ethical reckoning arrived late, if it ever came at all. Foreseeable and preventable harms accumulated while the builders moved fast, and the rest of us were left to sort through the wreckage. 

With the proliferation of artificial intelligence, we don’t have the luxury of retrospect. Systems are already making decisions about who gets a loan, who gets flagged at a border, whose résumé clears the first filter. The question of what AI should do, not just what it can do, is no longer theoretical. It’s operational and it’s urgent. 

This is the moment that Ethical by Design: Good Technology Principles for AI is written for. 

Building on what endures 

The Ethics Centre has been asking hard questions about technology and human flourishing for a long time. When we published the original Ethical by Design principles in 2018, AI was largely a specialist concern: something debated in research labs and tech conferences, not yet woven into the fabric of daily life. Those principles – that technology must respect human dignity, anticipate harm, and serve a genuine purpose – were designed to be durable. And they are: the ethical foundations haven’t shifted. 

But the landscape has. 

Generative AI didn’t just accelerate existing trends; it introduced a qualitatively different kind of challenge. Systems that learn, adapt, and produce outputs their own designers do not intend and cannot fully explain don’t fit neatly into frameworks built for more legible technologies. When a model generates a deepfake, hallucinates a legal precedent, or encodes a historical bias into a hiring recommendation, the question of accountability doesn’t resolve cleanly. The complexity is real, and it demands a response equal to it. 

This updated framework extends the original Ethical by Design principles. What’s new is the application. The framework intentionally grapples seriously with dimensions of AI ethics that are newer to mainstream conversation: the environmental cost of training and deploying models at scale; the hidden labour of the data annotators and content moderators whose work makes AI possible; the specific risks of synthetic content in an information environment already struggling with trust. These aren’t edge cases. They’re central to what it means to build AI responsibly. 

For the people who build and lead 

If you’re making decisions about whether and how to deploy AI in your organisation, this framework is for you. Not as a compliance checklist, but as a set of principles rigorous enough to stress-test your own reasoning. The central question of this framework is deceptively simple: ought before can.

Before we ask whether an AI system is technically feasible or commercially viable, we ask whether it should exist: whether its purpose is legitimate, its means are ethical, and its costs are fairly distributed.

That question doesn’t have a technical answer. No model can generate it for you. It requires the kind of careful, honest ethical reasoning that The Ethics Centre exists to support. This framework is designed to make that more accessible. 

Commercial pressures and competitive dyanmics are real. The expectation that organisations will adopt AI quickly, confidently, and at scale is entirely real. None of that changes the ethical calculus. It just makes the discipline harder and more necessary. 

What we’ve tried to do here is give you something useful for that harder work: eight principles with philosophical grounding and concrete practices, applied to the specific terrain of AI systems. Principles that don’t pretend the choices are easy, but insist that they are choices that can and should be made with explicit intention and accountability for impact. 

The revolution is already here. The question is what we choose to build with it, and who we choose to protect in the process. 

Download a copy of Ethical by Design: Good Technology Principles for AI here. 

If you’d like to discuss implementing ethical AI in your organisation, contact consulting@ethics.org.au. 

We’re thrilled to introduce Aubrey Blanche, our new Director of Ethical Advisory & Strategic Partnerships, who will lead our engagements with organisational partners looking to operate with the highest standards of ethical governance and leadership.

Aubrey is a responsible governance executive with 15 years of impact. An expert in issues of workplace fairness and the ethics of artificial intelligence, her experience spans HR, ESG, communications, and go-to-market strategy. She seeks to question and reimagine the systems that surround us to ensure that all can build a better world. A regular speaker and writer on issues of ethical business, finance, and technology, she has appeared on stages and in media outlets all over the world. 

To better understand the work she’ll be doing with The Ethics Centre, we sat down with Aubrey to discuss her views on AI, corporate responsibility, and sustainability.

We’ve seen the proliferation of AI impact the way in which we work. What does responsible AI use look like to you – for both individuals and organisations?

I think that the first step to responsibility in AI is questioning whether we use it at all! While I believe it is and will be a transformative technology, there are major downsides I don’t think we talk about enough. We know that it’s not quite as effective as many people running frontier AI labs aim to make us believe, and it uses an incredible amount of natural resources for what can sometimes be mediocre returns.  

Next, I think that to really achieve responsibility we need partnerships between the public and private sector. I think that we need to ensure that we’re applying existing regulation to this technology, whether that’s copyright law in the case of training, consumer protection in the case of chatbots interacting with children, or criminal prosecution regarding deepfake pornography. We also need business leaders to take ethics seriously, and to build safeguards into every stage from design to deployment. We need enterprises to refuse to buy from vendors that can’t show their investments in ensuring their products are safe.  

And last, we need civil society to actively participate in incentivising those actors to behave in ways that are of benefit to all of society (not just shareholders or wealthy donors). That means voting for politicians that support policies that support collective wellbeing, boycotting companies complicit in harms, and having conversations within their communities about how these technologies can be used safely.  

In a time where public trust is low in businesses, how can they operate fairly and responsibly?

I think the best way that businesses can build responsibility is to be more specific. I think people are tired of hearing “We’re committed to…”. There’s just been too much greenwashing, too much ethics washing, and too many “commitments” to diversity that haven’t been backed up by real investment or progress. The way through that is to define the specific objectives you have in relation to responsibility topics, publish your specific goals, and regularly report on your progress – even if it’s modest.  

And most importantly, do this even when trust is low. In a time of disillusionment, you’ll need to have the moral courage to do the right thing even when there is less short-term “credit” for it.  

How can we incentivise corporations to take responsible action on environmental issues?

I think that regulation can be a powerful motivator. I’m really excited that the Australian Accounting Standards Board is bringing new requirements into force that, at least for large companies, will force them to proactively manage climate risks and their impacts. While I don’t think it’s the whole answer, a regulatory “push” can be what’s needed for executives to see that actively thinking about climate in the context of their operations can be broadly beneficial to operations.  

What are you most excited about sinking your teeth into at The Ethics Centre?

There’s so much to be excited about! But something that I’ve found wildly inspiring is working with our Young Ambassadors – early career professionals in banking and financial services who are working with us to develop their ethical leadership skills. While I have enjoyed working with our members – and have spent the last 15 years working with leaders in various areas of corporate responsibility – there nothing quite like the optimism you get when learning from people who care so much and who show us what future is possible.  

Lastly – the big one, what does ethics mean to you?

A former boss of mine once told me that leadership is not about making the right choice when you have one: it’s about making the best choice you can when you have terrible ones and living with that choice. I think in many cases that’s what ethics is. It gives us a framework not to do the right thing when the answer is clear, but to align ourselves as closely as we can with our values and the greater good when our options are messy, complicated, or confusing.  

Personally, I’ve spent a deep amount of time thinking about my values, and if I were forced to distill them down to two, I would wholeheartedly choose justice and compassion. I have found that when I consider choices through those frames, I both feel more like myself and like I’ve made choices that are a net good in the world. And I’ve been lucky enough to spend my career in roles where I got to live those values – that’s a privilege I don’t take for granted, and one of the reasons I’m so thrilled to be in this new role with The Ethics Centre.