The State of AI Ethics Report (Volume 7) - AI at the Crossroads: A Practitioner's Guide To Community-Centered Solutions

This is not another framework or productivity analysis. SAIER Volume 7 is a snapshot from our vantage point, bringing together practitioners, researchers, advocates, and communities grappling with AI's realities on the ground. 

It captures perspectives from Canada, the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa, though we recognize many voices remain absent. We hope it generates more questions than it answers and encourages people from all walks of life to ask hard questions and be critical. It also reflects our entrepreneurial roots at the Montreal AI Ethics Institute (MAIEI), less interested in abstract principles and more focused on what's actually happening in the field. What does implementation look like? What's working? What's failing? Where are the gaps between policy rhetoric and lived experience?

We ground our work in understanding AI as sociotechnical systems. This means recognizing the technical components (software, hardware, data centres, chips), the social dimensions (people, culture, values, organizations), and the environmental impacts. Ignoring these interconnected realities reduces AI governance to compliance checklists when the real challenges are about trust, power, and lived impacts.

We're also humble enough to know we're not capturing everything. Regions remain underrepresented. This isn’t the definitive state of AI ethics. It’s a state of AI ethics, from where we sit, in 2025. AI ethics, fundamentally, is a process and not a destination. This volume is our contribution to this ongoing conversation.