Recent criticisms of AI ethics principles and practices have indicated a need for new approaches to AI ethics that can account for and intervene in the design, development, use, and governance of AI systems across multiple actors, contexts, and scales of activity. This paper positions AI value chains as an integrative concept that satisfies those needs, enabling AI ethics researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to take a more comprehensive view of the ethical and practical implications of AI systems. We review and synthesize theoretical perspectives on value chains from the literature on strategic management, service science, and economic geography. We then review perspectives on AI value chains from the academic, industry, and policy literature. We connect an inventory of ethical concerns in AI to the actors and resourcing activities involved in AI value chains to demonstrate that approaching AI ethics issues as value chain issues can enable more comprehensive and integrative research and governance practices. We illustrate this by suggesting five future directions for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to investigate and intervene in the ethical concerns associated with AI value chains.

翻译：近期对人工智能伦理原则与实践的批评表明，需要新的AI伦理方法，能够解释并干预涉及多重行动者、情境及活动规模的AI系统设计、开发、使用与治理过程。本文将AI价值链定位为满足这些需求的整合性概念，使AI伦理研究者、实践者与政策制定者能够更全面地审视AI系统的伦理与实践影响。我们梳理并综合了战略管理、服务科学与经济地理学文献中关于价值链的理论视角，继而审视学术界、产业界与政策文献中关于AI价值链的视角。将AI伦理问题的清单与AI价值链中涉及的参与者及资源调配活动相联结，表明将AI伦理问题作为价值链问题处理，能够促进更全面、更具整合性的研究与治理实践。为此，我们提出五个未来研究方向，供研究者、实践者与政策制定者探索并干预与AI价值链相关的伦理关切。