about

Behind the protocol

Henrik Skaug Sætra holds a ph.d. and has an extensive research background in technology, ethics, and politics. He also works as a sustainability consultant, and has experience form a wide variety of sustainability related projects in various sectors and with a diverse set of clients.

Research focus

His research explores the political, ethics, and social implications of emerging technologies, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence (AI). He combines this with a foundation in political theory, environmental ethics, and game theory and provides novel perspectives on the implications of technology.

Protocol foundations

The protocol was gradually developed through the author’s own work on the AI ethics and the relation to governance and sustainability reporting (Sætra, 2021a, 2021b, 2022), and through his work as a sustainability consultant in KPMG Norway. This combined experience demonstrated both the lack of actionable potential in much AI ethics related work, as it tends to be developed far away from corporate C-suites, and how existing sustainability and ESG related standards and frameworks lack sufficient sector specific guidance for AI and data intensive companies. The process consisted of an examination of relevant existing standards and frameworks and the subsequent development of the new AI ESG protocol which incorporates key insights from AI ethics.