Northeast Wisconsin businesses are rapidly adopting artificial intelligence. Companies are adopting it for quality control; innovating new manufacturing techniques; and deploying it for data analysis, accounting and logistics. Others are building marketing and sales initiatives that use the tools. And, like it or not, AI is all over the place in hiring and talent searches.
It is technology with almost unlimited potential and, according to futurist Rebecca Ryan, it also is “the Wild West” as rules and regulations regarding the technology evolve rapidly.
In a recent Fox Cities Chamber survey, 90% of the 45 organizations polled said they are open to the technology, yet 85% lack a formal AI governance policy.
I’ve attended several regional AI conferences that have featured experts and leaders of the companies deploying the technology, but an important question has been missing: How can we use AI ethically?
A conversation about copyrights suggested how to avoid liability without talking about the morality of taking someone’s work and using it without permission or compensation. A conversation about AI’s inherent hiring biases focused on minimizing risk without addressing what is lost when we start looking for workarounds instead of fixing or rejecting flawed technology.
A demonstration of how to create AI avatars didn’t address whether that is a fair way to treat customers or clients, or whether it is just another example of customer service sludge.
There are fears that AI will eliminate many types of jobs and yet I have heard no local discussion of how people will be trained for the incoming disruption. Initially, there were even schools discussing how to prevent AI use by students.
The list of potential ethical pitfalls is nearly endless, and yet I have heard no conversations about it.
I don’t think businesses need to avoid AI or even slow its rollout. Instead, they should have in-depth conversations about their values and how those apply to the adoption of AI. They need to ask hard questions that go beyond cost analysis or minimizing risk.
The business community has an opportunity to lead by example and help tame the Wild West.
