Ethical AI: Building a foundation of leadership and trust

CEOs and business leaders need to champion ethics within their organisations, both in terms of AI and more broadly. 

Every new technology creates new questions. Will it jeopardise personal information? Will it invade individual privacy? Is it ethical? Can it be trusted?

AI is no exception. Businesses are starting to pay attention to the ethical conflicts that artificial intelligence applications can unexpectedly raise, but it’s slow going.

A review of existing research documents shows that more than 75 organisations worldwide are already developing a code of ethics for artificial intelligence technologies, and many others agree that it’s essential to incorporate ethical AI principles into their core business processes. But, let’s face it: businesses must juggle a variety of priorities coming from different stakeholders (customers, employees, revenue, costs, growth, reputation, etc.) with different value sets. The reality is, ethical considerations don’t always come out on top.

So, how can companies manage the trade-offsbetween ethics and profits with AI, while taking full advantage of the promised benefits?

First off, CEOs and other business leaders need to champion ethics within their organisations, both in terms of AI and more broadly. They should make clear to all internal and external stakeholders — customers, employees, partners and the community at large — that the company is building its AI and other tech initiatives on an ethical foundation. 

Because AI is becoming increasingly important in today’s world, it gives corporate leaders a great opportunity to shine a spotlight on ethics in relation to bias, privacy, jobs, and unfair policies and practices throughout the company. The goal is to create a corporate culture that keeps ethics top of mind every day for all employees. This focus on ethics can also help uncover existing unfair practices — both internal and external.

Of course, corporate leaders don’t have to do this on their own. Successful ethics champions rally managers, employees, and other stakeholders under a responsible AI flag, involving them in all discussions and decisions about AI and ethics.

The first step is to define consumer profiles and determine how they would use AI applications, as well as how they would be affected by them. For example, customers using a telecommunications service chatbot, or employees using an AI application to screen process invoices.This would require consumer engagement, whichcould include various types of outreach, workshops, or training.