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Introducing Unity’s Guiding Principles for Ethical AI

November 28, 2018 in Engine & platform | 3 min. read
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Editor's note: An update to Unity's Guiding Principles for Ethical AI was published in June 2023.

 

At Unity, we fundamentally believe the world is a better place with more creators in it. It’s our mission every day to democratize development, solve hard problems, and enable success for creators in diverse industries such as games, automotive, architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC), media and entertainment.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a key component of that mission. AI is a powerful and disruptive technology altering the landscape of application development and the greater world as we know it. Think about that: “altering the landscape and the greater world as we know it.” Because we see AI as a potentially powerful tool, we feel compelled to express clear ethical and moral principles defining how we use AI.

That’s why we’re launching Unity’s Guide to Ethical AI. These principles are meant as a blueprint for the responsible use of AI for our developers, our community, and our company. We expect to develop these principles more fully and to add to them over time as our community of developers, regulators, and partners continue to debate best practices in advancing this new technology.

With this guide, we are committed to implementing ethical use of AI across all aspects of our company's interactions, development, and creation. We encourage our community of creators to join us in embracing, and over time, evolving these principles.

Unity’s six guiding AI principles are as follows:

  • Be Unbiased.
    Design AI tools to complement the human experience in a positive way.  Consider all types of human experiences in this pursuit. Diversity of perspective will lead to AI complementing experiences for everybody, as opposed to a select few.
  • Be Accountable.
    Consider the potential negative consequences of the AI tools we build. Anticipate what might cause potential direct or indirect harm and engineer to avoid and minimize these problems.
  • Be Fair.
    Do not knowingly develop AI tools and experiences that interfere with normal, functioning democratic systems of government. This means saying no to product development aimed at the suppression of human rights, as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as the right to free expression.
  • Be Responsible.
    Develop products responsibly and do not take advantage of your products’ users by manipulating them through AI’s vastly more predictive capabilities derived from user data.
  • Be Honest.
    Trust the users of the technology to understand the product’s purpose so they can make informed decisions about whether to use the product. Be clear and be transparent.
  • Be Trustworthy.
    Guard the AI derived data as if it were handed to you by your customer directly in trust to only be used as directed under the other principles found in this guide.

The adoption of AI is increasing at a fast pace. It’s helping developers in every area of society  -- entertainment, science, education, healthcare, manufacturing, design, and engineering, you name it -- to create solutions, implement change, and drive progress. We believe turning Unity developers into experienced AI practitioners is one of the best ways to democratize the technology.

We hope you’ll join us.

November 28, 2018 in Engine & platform | 3 min. read

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