  Numerous toolkits have been developed to support ethical AI development.
However, toolkits, like all tools, encode assumptions in their design about
what work should be done and how. In this paper, we conduct a qualitative
analysis of 27 AI ethics toolkits to critically examine how the work of ethics
is imagined and how it is supported by these toolkits. Specifically, we examine
the discourses toolkits rely on when talking about ethical issues, who they
imagine should do the work of ethics, and how they envision the work practices
involved in addressing ethics. Among the toolkits, we identify a mismatch
between the imagined work of ethics and the support the toolkits provide for
doing that work. In particular, we identify a lack of guidance around how to
navigate labor, organizational, and institutional power dynamics as they relate
to performing ethical work. We use these omissions to chart future work for
researchers and designers of AI ethics toolkits.
