On the Current and Emerging Challenges of Developing Fair and Ethical AI Solutions in Financial Services

AI has found a wide range of application areas in the financial services industry. As the number and the criticality of the applications continue to increase, fair and ethical AI has emerged as an industry-wide objective. In recent years, numerous ethical principles, guidelines and techniques have been proposed. However, the model development organizations face serious challenges in building ethical AI solutions. This paper focuses on the overarching issues model development teams face, which range from the design and implementation complexities, to the shortage of tools, and the lack of organizational constructs. It argues that focusing on the practical considerations is an important step in bridging the gap between the high-level ethics principles and the deployed AI applications, as well as starting industry-wide conversations toward solution approaches.