AI Ethics Checker: A Rule-Based Prototype for Early Stage Ethical Risk Assessment in AI Systems

As artificial intelligence systems become more integrated into decision-making processes, ensuring their ethical behavior is crucial. Challenges such as biased datasets, limited transparency, and unclear accountability make early-stage assessment of potential risks essential. This work introduces AI Ethics Checker, a lightweight, rule-based prototype designed to evaluate datasets and metadata for ethical concerns. The tool examines key dimensions including fairness across sensitive attributes, documentation completeness, and responsibility tracking. A sample report demonstrates its ability to highlight potential risks, providing developers and researchers with actionable insights for more responsible system design.