  Progress in the field of artificial intelligence has been accelerating
rapidly in the past two decades. Various autonomous systems from purely digital
ones to autonomous vehicles are being developed and deployed out on the field.
As these systems exert a growing impact on society, ethics in relation to
artificial intelligence and autonomous systems have recently seen growing
attention among the academia. However, the current literature on the topic has
focused almost exclusively on theory and more specifically on conceptualization
in the area. To widen the body of knowledge in the area, we conduct an
empirical study on the current state of practice in artificial intelligence
ethics. We do so by means of a multiple case study of five case companies, the
results of which indicate a gap between research and practice in the area.
Based on our findings we propose ways to tackle the gap.
