# Case Study: Deontological Ethics in NLP

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.04658 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04658/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 9 Oct 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 12 of 12)

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- [Navigating LLM Ethics: Advancements, Challenges, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18841/) (2024)
- [A Human Rights-Based Approach to Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02667/) (2022)
- [Position: Towards Bidirectional Human-AI Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09264/) (2024)
- [Adding Instructions during Pretraining: Effective Way of Controlling Toxicity in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07388/) (2023)
- [You Are What You Write: Preserving Privacy in the Era of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09391/) (2022)
- [Has It All Been Solved? Open NLP Research Questions Not Solved by Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12544/) (2023)
- [Towards Answering Open-ended Ethical Quandary Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05989/) (2022)
- [A Survey on Stereotype Detection in Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17642/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent work in natural language processing (NLP) has focused on ethical challenges such as understanding and mitigating bias in data and algorithms; identifying objectionable content like hate speech, stereotypes and offensive language; and building frameworks for better system design and data handling practices. However, there has been little discussion about the ethical foundations that underlie these efforts. In this work, we study one ethical theory, namely deontological ethics, from the perspective of NLP. In particular, we focus on the generalization principle and the respect for autonomy through informed consent. We provide four case studies to demonstrate how these principles can be used with NLP systems. We also recommend directions to avoid the ethical issues in these systems.