Leveraging Blockchain for Ethical AI: Mitigating Digital Threats and Strengthening Societal Resilience

The rise of online activities and the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) in sociotechnical systems have brought about both significant opportunities and ethical challenges. Among these challenges, one of the most relevant is addressing digital threats such as sexual exploitation leading to sextortion (a form of coercion) that disproportionately affects vulnerable groups, such as minors. This paper advocates the integration of blockchain technology into AI systems to enhance trust, transparency, and ethical governance in combating such threats. The paper argues that by adhering to ethical guidelines through the integration of blockchain operations that bring about strong decentralization, immutability, and auditability, ethical issues in AI are better managed. The paper adopts a mixed research approach of qualitative analyses and conceptual model to develop some set of blockchain-integrated AI operations. Through a literature review of related works on sexual exploitation leading to sextortion, we first identified digital technologies that enable sexual exploitation, the role of AI in mitigating sexual exploitations, ethical issues in these AI applications and blockchain concepts that address them. Then we adopted BPMN modelling to conceptually describe blockchain operations that will limit AI ethical risks. The paper highlights the critical intersection of ethical AI development, social resilience, and digital ethics and addresses the complexities of integrating technologies while emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary collaboration for developing AI applications that address social issues.