ethics-safety-impact

# Ethics, Safety & Impact Assessment

## Table of Contents
- [Purpose](#purpose)
- [When to Use](#when-to-use)
- [What Is It?](#what-is-it)
- [Workflow](#workflow)
- [Common Patterns](#common-patterns)
- [Guardrails](#guardrails)
- [Quick Reference](#quick-reference)

## Purpose

Ethics, Safety & Impact Assessment provides a structured framework for identifying potential harms, benefits, and differential impacts before launching features, implementing policies, or making decisions that affect people. This skill guides you through stakeholder identification, harm/benefit analysis, fairness evaluation, risk mitigation design, and ongoing monitoring to ensure responsible and equitable outcomes.

## When to Use

Use this skill when:

- **Product launches**: New features, algorithm changes, UI redesigns that affect user experience or outcomes
- **Policy decisions**: Terms of service updates, content moderation rules, data usage policies, pricing changes
- **Data & AI systems**: Training models, deploying algorithms, using sensitive data, automated decision-making
- **Platform changes**: Recommendation systems, search ranking, feed algorithms, matching/routing logic
- **Access & inclusion**: Features affecting accessibility, vulnerable populations, underrepresented groups, global markets
- **Safety-critical systems**: Health, finance, transportation, security applications where errors have serious consequences
- **High-stakes decisions**: Hiring, lending, admissions, criminal justice, insurance where outcomes significantly affect lives
- **Content & communication**: Moderation policies, fact-checking systems, content ranking, amplification rules

Trigger phrases: "ethical review", "impact assessment", "who might be harmed", "differential impact", "vulnerable populations", "bias audit", "fairness check", "safety analysis", "responsible AI", "unintended consequences"

## What Is It?

Ethics, Safety & Impact Assessment is a proactive evaluation framework that systematically