Responsible AI Charter
The Responsible AI Charter is a public commitment offered by the Institute for Sustainable IT, devoted to the use of artificial intelligence. It extends the Responsible IT Charter onto ground where decisions are taken quickly and their effects are hard to undo.
It is available in several languages at charter.isit-europe.org.
Why a separate charter
Adoption ran ahead of governance. Tools arrive through teams rather than through management, which produces Shadow AI: undeclared use that exposes internal data to third parties who may train their models on it.
A charter lets an organisation state a position before practice hardens.
Its themes
- Usefulness
- check that reaching for a model answers a real need rather than an expectation of keeping up.
- Sobriety
- size the model to the task, and count cumulative use rather than training alone.
- Transparency
- tell people when a system takes part in a decision that concerns them.
- Human oversight
- place it before the action when the system acts on its own, not after.
- Social effects
- anticipate the consequences for jobs and skills instead of recording them afterwards.
Relation to the AI Act
The AI Act sets legal obligations by risk level. The charter operates earlier and more broadly: it covers uses the regulation does not classify as high risk but which still raise questions of sobriety, dependency and acceptability.
