An umbrella term covering the design, development, deployment, and governance practices intended to ensure AI systems are ethical, fair, transparent, accountable, robust, secure, and respectful of privacy.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
An organisation's responsible-AI programme covering model cards, pre-deployment audits, ongoing monitoring, and an ethics-review board.
Is an instance
A research lab's responsible-AI publication checklist applied before model release.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A purely technical performance evaluation.
Not an instance
A marketing claim of 'ethical AI' without operational backing.

Editorial commentary

Responsible AI is the practical operationalisation of AI ethics: it spans guidelines (OECD AI Principles, UNESCO Recommendation), assurance frameworks (UK Government AI Assurance), and corporate practice. Specific component disciplines include fairness measurement, explainability, privacy-preserving ML, red-teaming, and impact assessment.

References

OECD AI Principles (2019); UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (2021).

Also known as

RAI

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Responsible AI"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/responsible-ai" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/responsible-ai",
  "name": "Responsible AI",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/responsible-ai",
  "description": "An umbrella term covering the design, development, deployment, and governance practices intended to ensure AI systems are ethical, fair, transparent, accountable, robust, secure, and respectful of privacy.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/ai-ml-research-outputs#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/responsible-ai",
  "sameAs": [
    "RAI"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:22:50",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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