Why you should hire a chief AI ethics officer

Artificial intelligence (AI) affects the lives of billions of people, rapidly transforming our society and challenging what it means to be human. Some think AI is just a buzzword, but it’s powerful enough to enable solutions in every sector, from personal digital assistants to fraud and failure prediction, self and assisted driving, and health diagnostics. AI can help personalize education and tutoring, create new jobs and assist in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath.

Alongside its positive effects, some AI applications raise legitimate concerns and risks. AI ethics is the multi-disciplinary and multistakeholder field of study that aims to define and implement technical and non-technical solutions to address these concerns and mitigate the risks.

AI solutions could, for example, unintentionally generate discriminatory outcomes because the underlying data is skewed towards a particular population segment. This could deepen existing structural injustices, skew power balances further, threaten human rights and limit access to resources and information.

Some AI systems could behave like black boxes with little or no explanation of why they make their decisions. According to FICO's latest report dedicated to the State of Responsible AI, two-thirds (65%) of respondent companies can’t explain how specific AI-based decisions or predictions are made. This could erode trust in AI and thus hamper its adoption, reducing the positive impacts of this technology. It could also damage a company’s reputation and the trust of its clients, as well as contradicting company values.

The main goal of a Chief AI Ethics Officer (CAIEO) is to make AI ethics principles part of operations within a company, organization or institution. A CAIEO advises and builds accountability frameworks for CEOs and boards on the unintended risks posed by AI to the organization. They should help companies comply with existing or expected AI regulations and oversee the implementation of many of the organization’s AI ethics governance and education functions.

Several companies, such as BCG, Salesforce, IBM and Microsoft, already have this role with various titles – Head of Responsible AI, AI Ethics Global Leader, Global AI Ethicist, or Chief Responsible AI Officer. “[T]he call for artificial intelligence ethics specialists is growing louder as technology leaders publicly acknowledge that their products may be flawed and harmful to employment, privacy and human rights,” says a recent WSJ article.

At a very high level, companies need an AI ethics framework to ensure that AI-enabled solutions are developed in ways that mitigate the chances of harm to relevant stakeholders. More specifically, a CAIEO should lead the definition of broad AI ethics goals and then help the company understand how to meet these. They need to ensure that the AI technology being developed has suitable properties (fairness, robustness, explainability) and that developers have the right tools and training to easily embed these properties in what they produce. They must make sure that risks in AI deployment (both internally and to other companies) are appropriately mitigated.

To achieve all this, the CAIEO role needs:

Data and AI are becoming core to most enterprises. While they reinvent their business model and strategic value in this new data-centric era, it is imperative that these organizations correctly and effectively identify and address AI ethics issues and risks. To do this – and to lead in creating both social and business value by building, deploying, and using AI in a responsible and trustworthy way – we advocate starting with the appointment of a CAIEO. This role will enable the creation of a company-wide approach to AI ethics.