The Ethical Imperative of AI Design
As artificial intelligence continues its rapid advance, it’s crucial that we grapple with ethical implications. AI systems are being deployed to make increasingly high-stakes decisions that impact human lives in fields like healthcare, criminal justice, and hiring. And even in fields like customer experience and marketing, which are not considered high-stakes, AI use is exploding and if not designed and monitored, can have unintended negative results.
Customers and consumers are increasingly demanding transparency and ethical use of their data. Privacy concerns are number one on the list; people are wary about all the data that companies have access to about them. They want to know what information is gathered, how it will be used and stored, and what steps are being taken to protect it. And many wonder if companies are even telling the truth when they answer these kind of questions.
This is why it’s imperative that we prioritize ethical AI design and keep humans meaningfully involved. Building AI systems that are transparent, interpretable, and subject to human oversight is imperative, even with what seems like simple matters, like customer experience. Creating decision-support tools that empower and augment human decision-makers, not AI, is key. Human expertise and judgment must remain central, with AI as an assist rather than a substitute.
This means investing in machine learning models whose decision logic can be readily grasped by humans, approaches that open the “black box” of why AI gives its results. It also means subjecting models to rigorous testing for fairness and robustness, and building in human feedback loops. In the CX space, it means customers should be able to choose what personal data they are comfortable sharing and allowing companies to store. Large amounts of data allow AI to personalize advertising, marketing, and user experience, but if customers don’t want that data stored, companies need to be able to show that they honor those wishes.
Developing ethical AI is one of the great challenges and obligations of our time. By keeping humans central and focusing on alignment with human values, we can work to ensure AI remains a force for good that benefits humanity as a whole.
