AI Ethics in Real Life: Why Professional Judgement Still Matters
Published in Computational Sciences and Education
When people talk about Artificial Intelligence, the discussion often focuses on the technology itself. Is the AI accurate? Is it biased? Is it transparent? Can it be trusted?
These are important questions. But they are not enough.
In real life, AI is not used by machines alone. It is used by people. A teacher may use AI to support learning. A doctor may use AI to assist diagnosis. A manager may use AI to support decision making. In each case, the human professional still has to interpret the AI output, question it, and decide what is appropriate.
This is the main idea behind our newly published article, “From abstract ethics to situated practice: A bibliometric analysis of AI ethics and professional judgement,” published in Educational Technology Research and Development.
Our study looked at how AI ethics research has developed between 2009 and 2025. We analysed 282 research publications to understand how scholars are discussing AI ethics across different professional fields.
What we found is that AI ethics is no longer only about abstract principles, technical safeguards, or policy rules. The discussion is moving closer to real world practice. Researchers are increasingly talking about trust, human judgement, collaboration between humans and AI, professional responsibility and decision making that depends on context.
In simple terms, AI ethics is moving from this question:
“What rules should guide AI?”
to a more practical question:
“How do people use AI responsibly in real situations?”
This shift matters because ethical decisions cannot always be solved by a checklist. In professional practice, people often face uncertainty, competing values, institutional pressures and human consequences.
This is where we need to learn, relearn and unlearn.
We need to learn how AI works and what it can offer. We need to relearn the value of professional judgement in a world where machines can produce fast answers. We also need to unlearn the habit of treating AI outputs as neutral, final, or automatically better than human reasoning.
This is especially important in education, where teachers must think carefully about fairness, learning, assessment, student development, and academic integrity.
Education is therefore an important space for AI ethics. Schools and universities are not only places where AI tools are used. They are also places where deeper questions about intelligence, learning, fairness and human agency are actively discussed.
One key message from our article is that professionals should not become passive users of AI. AI can support decision making, but it should not replace human judgement. Responsible AI use depends not only on better technology, but also on reflective, critical and ethically aware professionals.
In short, AI ethics is not only about making AI systems responsible. It is also about helping people use AI responsibly.
Greetings, my name is Chamil Arkhasa Nikko bin Mazlan, and I am a Malaysian educator and scholar in the field of music education. I hold a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and a Master’s degree in Music Education from Sultan Idris Education University (UPSI), where I focused on the pedagogical and cultural dimensions of music learning. My academic foundation began with a Bachelor of Music in Performance and a Diploma in Music from ASWARA, Malaysia’s National Academy of Arts, Culture, and Heritage.
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