Constructing an Ethical Modus Operandi for Artificial Intelligence: A critical inquiry in a multinational IT organisation

Abstract

The introduction of Artificial Intelligence-based (AI) based-services available to wider society has called for urgent consideration of the ethical implications of emergent intelligent technologies. The initial responses to this by governments, regulators, corporations and academia has been to address specific ethical issues through establishing numerous lists of principles, public-private initiatives, frameworks and voluntary codes of conduct. Principles alone will not address ethical concerns with respect to AI, and tackling this considerable transdisciplinary challenge will require significant focus by the academic research community in tandem with legislators and commercial organisations.
Research indicates that ethical AI principles have only a limited impact on the daily practices of users and developers highlighting a gap between what is published and what is practiced. Critical review of ethical guidelines intended to serve as a basis for decision-making by software engineers reveals that the effectiveness of ethical codes is almost zero in that they do not change the behaviour of professionals from the technical community, exacerbated by the opacity of AI control by governments and corporations developing commercially protected AI software.
This research seeks to explore, understand and analyse this view through a qualitative Grounded Theory study focused on Developers, Architects, Managers and Executives of an Information Technology Services corporation developing AI solutions. In addition, to establish whether a theoretical framework can be constructed from the insights of AI practitioners which can be used to derive ethical policies for intelligent software development. This research constitutes a multidisciplinary approach into the ethical concerns of AI using qualitative techniques targeting a diverse sample of industry practitioners.
The results and contribution of this study confirm that there is a policy-to-practice gap, but more importantly highlights and reinforces the depth of concern amongst practitioners in how to design and develop intelligent systems which consider ethical challenges. This is particularly the case where those systems can operate independently or autonomously, and specifically where technology is anthropomorphised in logical or physical form.

Date of Award	4 Aug 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Winchester
Supervisor	Emma Nottingham (Supervisor) & Maria Emmanouilidou (Supervisor)