Moral Compass: A Data-Driven Benchmark for Ethical Cognition in AI

Aijaz, Aisha; Batra, Arnav; Bazaz, Aryaan; Srinivasa, Srinath; Mutharaju, Raghava; Kumar, Manohar

doi:10.24963/ijcai.2025/1059

Moral Compass: A Data-Driven Benchmark for Ethical Cognition in AI

Aisha Aijaz, Arnav Batra, Aryaan Bazaz, Srinath Srinivasa, Raghava Mutharaju, Manohar Kumar

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Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. AI and Social Good. Pages 9529-9537.

https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1059

Keywords

Humans and AI: General
Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications: General
Natural Language Processing: General
AI Ethics, Trust, Fairness: General

Abstract

We propose the Moral Compass benchmark, a point of reference for incorporating ethical cognition in AI. It has four key contributions. A Moral Decision Dataset (MDD) that captures cases with ethical ambiguity, along with parameters that aid moral decision-making. It is created using a methodology that leverages the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) and seed data from real-world sources which are processed, summarized, and augmented. We also introduce a Moral Decision Knowledge Graph (MDKG) that is created using feature mappings of the relational dataset MDD to facilitate efficient querying. To demonstrate the validity and robustness of this dataset, we introduce an Ethics Scoring Algorithm (ESA) that makes use of the parameters defined in the dataset to calculate ethical scores for isolated actions. Furthermore, ESA is extended by the novel concept of context-sensitive thresholding (CST) to discretize grey areas to resolve ethical dilemmas with explainable results. This work aims to facilitate ethical cognition in AI systems that are deployed in various important sections of society through a clear methodology, modular development, and broad applicability.

Aisha Aijaz, Arnav Batra, Aryaan Bazaz, Srinath Srinivasa, Raghava Mutharaju, and Manohar Kumar. 2025. Moral Compass: A Data-Driven Benchmark for Ethical Cognition in AI. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-25. IJCAI, 9529–9537. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1059

@inproceedings{ijcai2025p1059,
  title     = {Moral Compass: A Data-Driven Benchmark for Ethical Cognition in AI},
  author    = {Aijaz, Aisha and Batra, Arnav and Bazaz, Aryaan and Srinivasa, Srinath and Mutharaju, Raghava and Kumar, Manohar},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on
               Artificial Intelligence, {IJCAI-25}},
  publisher = {International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization},
  editor    = {James Kwok},
  pages     = {9529--9537},
  year      = {2025},
  month     = {8},
  note      = {AI and Social Good},
  doi       = {10.24963/ijcai.2025/1059},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1059},
}

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TI  - Moral Compass: A Data-Driven Benchmark for Ethical Cognition in AI
AU  - Aijaz, Aisha
AU  - Batra, Arnav
AU  - Bazaz, Aryaan
AU  - Srinivasa, Srinath
AU  - Mutharaju, Raghava
AU  - Kumar, Manohar
T2  - Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-25
PB  - International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization
PY  - 2025
SP  - 9529
EP  - 9537
DO  - 10.24963/ijcai.2025/1059
UR  - https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/1059
ER  -