AI ethics is extremely important today. 61% of consumers say it’s increasingly important for businesses to build and maintain trust as AI technologies advance, according to a Salesforce Research statistic mentioned in HubSpot Blog.
As such, we feel AI ethics is a crucial topic to explore in this era of rapid AI advancement.
In this blog post, we’ll cover the following:
- Why ethics in AI is important.
- Guidelines to follow when using AI.
- Social and societal considerations.
- How Psycray ensures ethics in AI use.
- Concluding thoughts.
Why AI Ethics is important
Ethics in AI is important because customers have always cared about protecting their privacy and receiving truthful information. That couldn’t be more important in the age of AI, where data breaches and episodes of “AI slop” have left consumers skeptical of whether businesses are using AI ethically.
In addition, AI makes it easier for customer-business boundaries to be crossed — if someone inputs customer data into an AI engine, for example, it could leak out in unwanted ways. This is why it’s crucial to both understand and implement ethical practices with AI.
Key AI Ethics Guidelines to Follow
Institutions that know a lot about AI governance, such as IBM, have defined five key ethical principles to follow when using AI:
- Accountability.
The AI models that businesses implement must be able to follow through with the processes they were created to complete. This ensures companies can count on them to accurately do the job they were meant to do. They should be built to support – not replace – human intelligence, and be able to be counted on.
To help keep these AI models accountable, companies can use an organizational hierarchy to delineate each part of the model to a certain team member, according to the Harvard Division of Continuing Education. That way, if something goes wrong in one part of it, they can easily determine who’s responsible for solving the problem.
- Reliability.
These models also must be able to adapt based on the data it’s given. To do this, employees should constantly monitor and validate the data given to the systems. Through routine checks, businesses can confirm the validity of their AI/ML models. This helps ensure the data is trustworthy and current and consistent with the current customers, resources, and needs of the business.
- Explainability.
The employees in the organization should be able to understand and explain the models used. At the enterprise level, the benefits of AI models become useless if companies can’t explain how they help.
Take, for example, a healthcare company or bank. The predictions these companies’ AI/ML models produce must be explainable to ensure the technology doesn’t have any inherent bias and that the model is creating effective results, according to The Enterprises Project.
- Security.
As ransomware attacks continue to occur, companies need to ensure their AI/ML models aren’t vulnerable to being attacked, according to The Enterprises Project. This will not only keep company systems safe, but it will also help clients feel more inclined to trust companies.
Thus, a strong data security protocol is a must, according to the Harvard Division of Continuing Education. This could include strong encryption protocols, strict identity and access management rules to limit who can access the data, and anonymyzation of personal data used for training purposes.
- Privacy.
Businesses rely heavily on the cloud to store customer data; therefore, they need to ensure the AI/ML models can keep sensitive information private, according to The Enterprises Project.
According to the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, a strong security system can help keep personally identifiable information (PII) safe.
UNESCO’S “Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” suggests 10 ethical principles for implementing AI: Proportionality (use of AI shouldn’t go beyond what is necessary to perform desired objectives) and do no harm, safety and security, right to data privacy and protection, multi-stakeholder and adaptive governance collaboration, responsibility and accountability, transparency and explainability, human oversight, sustainability, public education, and fairness and non-discrimination.
These principles, in addition to IBM’s guidelines, serve as a guiding framework for using AI responsibly.
Social and societal Considerations
In addition to caring about privacy, security, and transparency, we must also consider social and environmental justice when implementing AI systems.
According to the European Commission, this looks like making sure AI doesn’t use unfair bias, such as marginalization of specific groups or exacerbating prejudice and discrimination. It should also be accessible to anyone with any disability and should be vetted by relevant stakeholders.
Furthermore, AI should take into account the health of our planet and our future generation’s wellbeing. They should take the environment and other living beings into account and consider their social and societal impact.
How Psycray Ensures Ethics in AI Usage
At Psycray, we prioritize ethics by ensuring customer privacy and creating high-quality messaging.
For example, when we build any kind of tech solution for a client, we always implement security features such as a secure single sign-on or enhanced domain protection. This helps our clients feel safe working with us, knowing that their internal and external data will be protected.
In addition, we hold ourselves to high standards when creating content or cold outreach emails, taking care to base our creative work in human thought and refine with AI as necessary instead of relying on generative AI to do the work for us. This helps us maintain our creativity and use AI as a tool to improve rather than a substitute for human thought.
Concluding Thoughts
In conclusion, practicing ethical AI use is imperative for any business looking to grow. Customers care about their privacy and want to trust that the businesses they rely on will tell them the truth.
It’s up to us to uphold the highest standards for ourselves and our clients.
If our privacy, security, and transparency solutions interest you, feel free to contact us — we’d love to learn more about how we can help your business through ethical, practical AI solutions.