Interdisciplinary research: Friend or foe to ethical AI?

Abstract This paper investigates a specific culture of interdisciplinarity that has gained traction at the intersection of applied AI and ethics. To address social and ethical harms of AI applications, scholars have suggested importing norms, methodologies and governance frameworks from established disciplines such as the social sciences or medicine. I show how this importation presupposes and endorses a framing of applied AI as a domain separate from established disciplines. Yet, such separation is what initially allows AI practitioners to operate outside those disciplinary norms that have evolved to prevent harms now associated with AI applications. Conversely, if AI applications were understood as situated firmly within these disciplines, practitioners would already be accountable to their norms and standards. Paradoxically, this culture of interdisciplinarity might thus reinforce a problematic disciplinary isolation of applied AI underlying the very ethical issues it seeks to mitigate – fighting symptoms while playing into their cause. In response, I outline three paths forward.