Catalogue of Tools & Metrics for Trustworthy AI

BigScience is an ongoing collaborative open science initiative where a large number of researchers from all over the world work together to train a Large Language Model (LLM). Everything happens entirely in the open, anyone can participate, and all research artifacts are shared with the entire research community. Consequently, BigScience would like to ensure free worldwide access to its LLM by taking a multicultural and responsible approach to developing and releasing these artifacts. 

In this context, the drafting of an ethical charter has a threefold scope: a) to establish BigScience’s core values in order to allow its contributors to commit to them both individually and collectively; b) to serve as a pivot for drafting the documents intended to frame specific issues ethically and legally (e.g., license, model cards, data governance, etc.); c) to promote BigScience values within the research community through scientific publications, disseminations, and scientific popularization. This process allows the community to engage in discussions around ethical concerns, how to anticipate and mitigate them, and how to be ethically involved in what we develop and deploy in open access. Moreover, the ethical charter informs the other ethical-sensitive documents, such as the Responsible AI License and the technical documentation (e.g., data and model cards). 

The BigScience ethical charter represents one of the governance tools that can ensure legitimacy and accountability grounded on ethical deliberation. Moreover, this tool allows for a more comprehensive view of the technology it is intended to frame ethically. This ethical charter has been drafted respecting the rigor of moral philosophy in instrumentalizing the values discussed and selected as the result of a collective collaboration based on consensus, and by using an ethical approach that allows dialogue and coexistence of different value systems (value pluralism).