Like a Researcher Stating Broader Impact For the Very First Time

Abstract

In requiring that a statement of broader impact accompany all submissions for this year's conference, the NeurIPS program chairs made ethics part of the stake in groundbreaking AI research. While there is precedent from other fields and increasing awareness within the NeurIPS community, this paper seeks to answer the question of how individual researchers reacted to the new requirement, including not just their views, but also their experience in drafting and their reflections after paper acceptances. We present survey results and considerations to inform the next iteration of the broader impact requirement should it remain a requirement for future NeurIPS conferences.

Navigating the Broader Impacts of AI Research Workshop at the 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020)

References in corpus (2)

• The Role of Cooperation in Responsible AI Development
• Report prepared by the Montreal AI Ethics Institute (MAIEI) on Publication Norms for Responsible AI

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Unpacking the Expressed Consequences of AI Research in Broader Impact Statements
• ESR: Ethics and Society Review of Artificial Intelligence Research
• Thinking Through and Writing About Research Ethics Beyond "Broader Impact"
• AI Ethics Statements -- Analysis and lessons learnt from NeurIPS Broader Impact Statements