From ethics to process — ISO/IEC TR 24368
Lesson 4 of 5 in Trustworthiness, Bias, and AI Quality: The TR Series and 25059.
The foundations path showed you the world’s ethics charters converging on a shared canon of principles. TR 24368 is SC 42’s answer to the question those charters leave open: what does an organisation actually do with them? It is an overview of ethical and societal concerns written for people who must build processes, not manifestos — and it is deliberately humble, positioning itself as a map of themes and approaches rather than a moral authority.
Its themes will look familiar — accountability, fairness and non-discrimination, transparency, privacy, human autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence, human dignity — plus the societal layer: labour displacement, environmental cost, concentration of power. The novelty is not the list. It is the insistence that each theme be routed into a governance mechanism: unowned principles decorate walls; owned principles generate evidence.
| Ethical theme | The question it forces | Where it lands in 42001 |
|---|---|---|
Human autonomy & dignity | Does the system manipulate, deceive, or foreclose meaningful choice? | Intended-use definition and responsible-use objectives (A.9); prohibited-use boundaries in the AI policy |
Fairness & non-discrimination | Who bears the errors, and did we choose the fairness definition deliberately? | Annex C fairness objective → TR 24027-informed assessment → clause 9 metrics |
Beneficence / non-maleficence | Do the benefits justify the harms, for whom, and who checked? | AI system impact assessment (clause 6.1.4, control A.5, ISO/IEC 42005 method) |
Accountability | Can a named person answer for this system’s behaviour? | Roles and responsibilities (5.3, A.3), event logging (A.6.2.8), concern-reporting channels |
Societal & environmental concerns | What does this system do to labour, environment, and public discourse at scale? | Impact assessment scope: 42005 explicitly extends the lens to groups and societies |
Note the boundary TR 24368 draws around itself: ethics guidance is not certifiable, and should not pretend to be. An auditor can verify that you have an impact-assessment process, that it ran, that findings were treated — never that your conclusions were morally correct. This division of labour is a feature: the standard supplies process discipline and vocabulary; the moral judgment remains yours, exercised through the values your governing body commits to. The board-governance module picks up exactly that thread — how TR 24368’s themes become board-level value commitments that cascade down the policy hierarchy.
Interactive checkpoint quiz (1 questions) — open this page in a browser to take it.