Ethics-driven incentives: supporting government policies for responsible AI innovation

In the wake of rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI)-based intelligent and autonomous systems, ethics has assumed paramount importance. Although guidelines for developing human-centered models are essential, government intervention is urgently needed to incentivize and support companies’ ethical behavior. This article explores the idea of ethics-driven incentives to help the AI industry better understand, address, and mitigate the societal impacts of these technologies. We propose an ethics-driven incentive spectrum tailored to the industry’s unique challenges by analyzing existing incentive schemes related to environmental sustainability, transparency, and corporate social responsibility. By aligning public and private interests, these incentives can catalyze the deployment of ethical intelligent systems, ensuring that they benefit society equitably and responsibly. Our study concludes with a series of future research directions, inviting experts and professionals to delve deeper into this research direction and help to realize the potential of AI for the welfare of society.