{"id":48929,"date":"2022-04-22T11:53:25","date_gmt":"2022-04-22T03:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=48929"},"modified":"2022-04-22T11:53:27","modified_gmt":"2022-04-22T03:53:27","slug":"responsibility-for-ai-ethics-shifts-from-tech-silo-to-broader-executive-champions-says-ibm-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2022\/04\/22\/responsibility-for-ai-ethics-shifts-from-tech-silo-to-broader-executive-champions-says-ibm-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Responsibility for AI ethics shifts from tech silo to broader executive champions, says IBM study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A new IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) study revealed a radical shift in the roles responsible for leading and upholding AI ethics at an organization. When asked which function is primarily accountable for AI ethics, 80% of respondents pointed to a non-technical executive, such as a CEO, as the primary &#8220;champion&#8221; for AI ethics, a sharp uptick from 15% in 2018.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The global study also indicates that despite a strong imperative for advancing trustworthy AI, including better performance compared to peers in sustainability, social responsibility, and diversity and inclusion, there remains a gap between leaders&#8217; intention and meaningful actions<em>.\u00a0<\/em>The study found:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Business executives are now seen as the driving force in AI ethics<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>CEOs (28%) \u2013 but also Board members (10%), General Counsels (10%), Privacy Officers (8%), and Risk &amp; Compliance Officers (6%) are viewed as being most accountable for AI ethics by those surveyed.<\/li><li>While 66% of respondents cite the CEO or other C-level executive as having a strong influence on their organization&#8217;s ethics strategy, more than half cite board directives (58%) and the shareholder community (53%).<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Building trustworthy AI is perceived as a strategic differentiator and organizations are beginning to implement AI ethics mechanisms.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>More than three-quarters of business leaders surveyed this year agree AI ethics is important to their organizations, up from about 50% in 2018.<\/li><li>At the same time, 75% of respondents believe ethics is a source of competitive differentiation, and more than 67% of respondents that view AI and AI ethics as important indicate their organizations outperform their peers in sustainability, social responsibility, and diversity and inclusion.<\/li><li>Many companies have started making strides. In fact, more than half of respondents say their organizations have taken steps to embed AI ethics into their existing approach to business ethics.<\/li><li>More than 45% of respondents say their organizations have created AI-specific ethics mechanisms, such as an AI project risk assessment framework and auditing\/review process.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Ensuring ethical principles are embedded in AI solutions is an urgent need for organizations, but progress is still too slow<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>More surveyed CEOs (79%) are now prepared to embed AI ethics into their AI practices \u2013 up from 20% in 2018 &#8212; and more than half of responding organizations have publicly endorsed common principles of AI ethics.<\/li><li>Yet, less than a quarter of responding organizations have operationalized AI ethics, and fewer than 20% of respondents strongly agreed that their organization&#8217;s practices and actions match (or exceed) their stated principles and values.<\/li><li>68% of surveyed organizations acknowledge that having a diverse and inclusive workplace is important to mitigating bias in AI, but findings indicate that AI teams are still substantially less diverse than their organizations&#8217; workforces: 5.5 times less inclusive of women, 4 times less inclusive of LGBT+ individuals and 1.7 times less racially inclusive.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;As many companies today use AI algorithms across their business, they potentially face increasing internal and external demands to design these algorithms to be fair, secured and trustworthy; yet, there has been little progress across the industry in embedding AI ethics into their practices,&#8221; said Jesus Mantas, Global Managing Partner, IBM Consulting. &#8220;Our IBV study findings demonstrate that building trustworthy AI is a business imperative and a societal expectation, not just a compliance issue. As such, companies can implement a governance model and embed ethical principles across the full AI life cycle.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The time for companies to act is now. The study data suggests that those organizations who implement a broad AI ethics strategy interwoven throughout business units may have a competitive advantage moving forward. The study provides recommended actions for business leaders including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Take a cross-functional, collaborative approach<\/strong>&nbsp;&#8211; ethical AI requires a holistic approach, and a holistic set of skills across all stakeholders involved in the AI ethics process. C-Suite executives, designers, behavioral scientists, data scientists, and AI engineers each have a distinct role to play in the trustworthy AI journey.<\/li><li><strong>Establish both organizational and AI lifecycle governance to operationalize the discipline of AI ethics<\/strong>&nbsp;&#8211; take a holistic approach to incentivizing, managing and governing AI solutions across the full AI lifecycle, from establishing the right culture to nurture AI responsibly, to practices and policies to products.<\/li><li><strong>Reach beyond your organization for partnership \u2013<\/strong>&nbsp;expand your approach by identifying and engaging key AI-focused technology partners, academics, startups, and other ecosystem partners to establish &#8220;ethical interoperability.&#8221;<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When asked which function is primarily accountable for AI ethics, 80% of respondents pointed to a non-technical executive, such as a CEO, as the primary &#8220;champion&#8221; for AI ethics, a sharp uptick from 15% in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":48930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[214,96,2727,1656],"class_list":["post-48929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-white-papers","tag-ibm","tag-technology","tag-technology-adaption","tag-technology-investment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}