ROI in AI Ethics Framework Calculator v0.8.5
The return on investments in AI ethics and governance initiatives should be
assessed holistically. While this calculator provides a helpful tool for assessing quantifiable
returns, a holistic assessment should also include returns and impacts that are qualitative in
nature. It is important to consider a broad set of stakeholders and the impact on society at
large during the holistic assessment process.
Additional Information.
Copyright © IBM Corporation, 2024
This HROE Framework Calculator (“Calculator”) is an implementation of the research undertaken jointly by IBM and the University of Notre Dame through the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab. Read the research paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.13057).
The use of the Calculator is based on return-on-investment (ROI) concepts and formulas that reflect factors in AI ethics principles, regulatory requirements, and industry standards at the time of publication. Such factors may evolve and change over time. Users should review that the implementation of the Calculator remains current for factors related to their use case.
Users are solely responsible for the content they input and for use of the results generated by the Calculator. Results will vary depending on user input, and reflect stakeholder-specific perspectives for potential return relative to the ethical investments analyzed. Neither IBM nor the University of Notre Dame make any warranty that such results will be achieved.
Additional reference materials:
Holistic Return on AI Ethics Framework Calculator
Organizations are motivated to implement ethical AI practices for various reasons. For example, because they believe it is the right thing to do or to avoid costs such as lawsuits and fines. You can use this calculator to estimate your potential returns on AI ethics investments, and refer to the paper titled, "The Return on Investment in AI Ethics: A Holistic Framework" (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.13057) for a deeper understanding of the benefits. The paper proposes a comprehensive approach to understanding the returns on investments in AI ethics.
The Holistic Return on AI Ethics framework considers not only direct economic returns but also intangible benefits related to reputation and real options connected to organizational capabilities. This framework is designed to help organizations justify their investments in AI ethics by demonstrating how these investments can lead to cost savings, revenue generation, improved stakeholder perceptions, and enhanced future opportunities.
Note: The return on investments in AI ethics and governance initiatives should be assessed holistically. While this calculator provides a helpful tool for assessing quantifiable returns, a holistic assessment should also include returns and impacts that are qualitative in nature. It is important to consider a broad set of stakeholders and the impact on society at large during the holistic assessment process.
AI technologies, while beneficial, pose significant ethical challenges such as bias, fairness, and privacy concerns. Addressing these issues requires substantial investments, which organizations often find difficult to justify without clear evidence of return on investment.
The ROI in AI Ethics framework addresses this gap by integrating economic impacts, such as direct financial returns and cost avoidance, with intangible impacts, like improved reputation and stakeholder trust. Additionally, it includes real options that offer future flexibility and adaptability. This approach provides a comprehensive view of how AI ethics investments can contribute to an organization's overall success and sustainability, making it easier to justify and sustain these critical initiatives.
In line with this holistic approach, this program uses the formulas provided in the paper to calculate the ROI of AI ethics investments over multiple years. This program prompts users for inputs related to economic returns, reputational returns, and capability returns for each year, as well as the discount factor and initial investment costs.
By incorporating these variables, the program computes the ROI by discounting future returns to their present value and summing up the total returns from economic, reputational, and capability investments. This multi-year approach allows organizations to better evaluate the long-term benefits of their AI ethics investments, providing a clearer picture of how these investments impact their overall performance and strategic flexibility.
Toolbar Help
The toolbar above the input form has several buttons that help you work with the calculator's input values:
Help With This Toolbar: Brings up this help screen.
Save Values as Default: Pressing this button saves the current values in the input fields as the default form, which gets loaded automatically whenever the calculator is reloaded or the browser is restarted.
This function stores the values of the form in the browser's local storage, which allows data to be retained even after the browser is closed and reopened. You can update the default form at any time by pressing the button again. Upon saving, the toolbar will display the message "Saved Default Form."
If a default form has been previously saved, the toolbar will display the message "Loaded Default Form" when the calculator is reloaded.
Erase Form: Pressing this button erases the input form and displays the message "--- BLANK FORM ---" in the toolbar. Note that that, if you erase the input form and then save the blank form as the default form, the calculator will always come up blank when the page loads, until you save a different form as default. Erasing the form does not clear the default form.
Delete Default Form: This deletes the browser's local storage and therefore the default form. If you press this button and reload the web page or reopen the browser, you will see the following message, which also appears the very first time you use the calculator:
Examples and Navigation Controls: The ROI in AI Ethics calculator comes pre-loaded with 10 examples to help you better understand how the HROE formula works. The Examples Navigation controls are these:
Navigating to an example fills the input form with predefined values and automatically calculates the ROI. The navigation wraps around, so, if you are on the last example and click "Next Example," it will take you back to the first example, which is the one explained in the paper. Similarly, if you are on the first example and click "Previous Example," it will take you to the last example.
These examples are stored in the hroe-examples.js file, located in the scripts directory. Here is what it looks like:
You can edit this file to add new examples, as well as delete or modify existing ones. Remember to reload the page for your changes to take effect.
If you plan to modify the hroe-examples.js file, we strongly recommend making a backup first and keeping the example from the paper as the first entry.
FUTURE FEATURE: This disabled button is a placeholder for a tentative future feature that would allow you to configure and connect to external sources to populate the different input fields.
ROI in AI Ethics
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Economic Returns (Re): Returns from economic benefits, including fine avoidance (e.g., fine received for non-compliance with regulation).
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Reputational Returns (Rr): Returns from reputation.
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Capability Returns (Rc): Returns from increased capabilities.