IBM is committed to developing and using technology responsibly
Balancing innovation and responsibility
At IBM, responsible technology isn’t an afterthought—it’s how we innovate with intention.
Guided by enduring principles and reinforced through enterprise‑wide governance, IBM’s approach to Responsible Technology enables trust, transparency, and accountability to be embedded across how we design, deploy, and govern AI and emerging technologies.
Betsy Greytok and Francesca Rossi
Responsible Technology Board Co-Chairs
How IBM Governs Technology, Responsibly
IBM’s Responsible Technology Board’s mission is clear: to provide governance, standards and practical application of principles for how IBM develops and deploys AI and emerging technologies like quantum computing. It enables IBM teams to act with confidence, speed, and measurable impact in accordance with the company’s values — to advance technology responsibly for our clients, partners and the world.
Responsible Technology & Governance Framework
IBM’s Responsible Technology and Governance Framework turns principles into practice across people, processes, and technology.
Principles of Trust
Pillars of Trustworthy AI
AI systems should be designed and developed to provide explanations and sufficient observability. Information about their development should be available to relevant stakeholders. Users should be notified when they are interacting with an AI system. AI should be created in an open innovation ecosystem to support multi-stakeholder collaboration and co-creation.
AI systems should operate fairly within their intended context, whether making predictions, providing recommendations, generating content, or executing tasks. The behavior of such systems should align with relevant human values, such as avoiding generating hateful and abusive content, or executing harmful actions.
AI systems should effectively handle adversarial conditions, such as abnormalities in input/output, unpredictable behavior of other AI systems, and cybersecurity threats. They should also be accurate, whether making predictions, providing recommendations, generating content, or executing tasks.
AI systems should be designed and developed in a way that prioritizes and safeguards consumers’ privacy and data rights, including in their predictions, recommendations, generated content, decisions or actions. Best practices should be designed and implemented to mitigate inappropriate dissemination of personal information and to respect copyright or other intellectual property rights.
Impact Dimensions
Technology should augment human agency, trust, and well-being.
Technology should be designed, deployed, and used for the benefit of society, supporting human-centric innovation.
Technology should be intentionally efficient to drive high-impact, long-term value and sustainable growth.
Governance as the operational backbone
Governance is the operational backbone of IBM’s Responsible Technology and Governance Framework, translating the Principles, Pillars, and Impact Dimensions into action.
The Framework is operationalized through IBM’s Integrated Governance Program (IGP), education initiatives such as IBM SkillsBuild, open technologies including Granite Guardian and open‑source toolkits such as AI Fairness 360 and the Adversarial Robustness Toolbox, and product capabilities like IBM watsonx.governance®. IBM Consulting’s AI Strategy and Governance offerings further support organizations in applying responsible AI practices, alongside collaboration with policy, standards, and research partners across the responsible technology ecosystem.
- Risk Atlas
- Board Best Practices
Risk Atlas
The IBM Responsible Technology Board’s Risk Atlas, now integral to watsonx.governance, has helped lead IBM Research advances in AI Governance, establishing IBM as an industry leader.
Board Best Practices
The IBM Responsible Technology Board develops perspectives, best practices and actionable guidance to help IBM, the industry and the world navigate the opportunities and challenges presented by AI and emerging technologies.
Responsibility in action
IBM’s approach to Responsible Technology reflects a company‑wide commitment to trust, responsibility, and long‑term value, anchored in governance practices that shape how we operate.
Responsible Business
Transparency to our Responsible Business practices.
Quantum Safe
Securing the digital world for the quantum era.
