Innovation with integrity: The 4 principles of responsible use of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the landscape of medicine, bringing not only unprecedented opportunities but also complex ethical challenges. At this pivotal juncture in medical history, the technology is reshaping how we approach healthcare by adding new tools and delivering precision and speed that were once unimaginable.

From accelerating drug discovery to revolutionizing clinical trials, AI’s ability to harness vast amounts of data is unlocking personalized treatments, driving breakthroughs and offering new hope in the fight against diseases like cancer.

At the same time, ensuring transparency and integrity is critical to building trust with patients and regulators while accelerating innovation for better outcomes. Moreover, a human-centred approach is vital when using AI to reimagine medicine.

This approach correlates with the changing role of the chief compliance officer. Once primarily focused on adherence to legal and regulatory requirements, especially in the field of anti-bribery, today’s chief compliance officers are increasingly required to adopt a more integrated approach, given the growing complexity of the regulatory landscape.

That includes emerging regulation on AI and heightened expectations from stakeholders regarding corporate behaviour.

Firstly, AI is an accelerator of corporate productivity and impact. With many AI models in the ownership and control of corporations and regulation slowly but surely catching up, the AI boom also becomes a magnifying glass on companies’ responsibility to consider the societal impacts of their activities.

Gaining and maintaining trust has become a hard currency for corporations. General scepticism towards globalization and profit distribution often leads to the perception that corporations lack ethical standards or struggle to uphold them consistently.

This change in regulatory requirements and societal expectations calls for new company governance and assurance models and a different leadership profile.

Over time this approach leads to an integrated assurance system which avoids governance silos in corporations and allows them to adapt with foresight to new challenges, for example, the responsible use of AI.

Secondly, AI’s emergence over the last decade serves as a great example of the value of integrated assurance and centralized risk management.

Effective enterprise-wide risk governance will have identified the risks and opportunities associated with AI early on.

The organization could have established some principle-based guidance while the risks related to AI were still focused on specific applications in data science and largely abstract to the wider workforce.

By 2022, when the AI boom accelerated significantly and the risks became more tangible, an integrated function would have been able to rapidly establish mature policy and control frameworks based on experience with other risk areas and enterprise standards.

This type of foresight and organizational adaptability are direct benefits of an integrated assurance model and are key to helping organizations confidently seize the opportunities offered by AI technology.

At Novartis, we ensure that AI systems have a clear purpose, respect human rights, and are accurate, truthful, not misleading, and appropriate for the intended context. We issue ethical principles to provide a simple framework for responsible AI.

This framework should enable people to challenge their own decisions and biases. By aligning them with our Code of Ethics and our new data and technology policy, we reinforce their importance and create a clear path for us all to follow.

Any approach to AI must be grounded in core principles that guide the different stages of AI development and deployment, driving innovations to be cutting-edge and ethically sound.

The four key principles in our Ethical use of Data & Technolgy Policy are:

Respect humanity and maintain trust with society through deploying and using data and technology in ways that promote diversity and inclusion, respect human rights and benefit patients and society.

Describe clearly and simply why and how the organization collects data and what it does with data and technology.

Use data and technology responsibly and be accountable for the appropriate management and protection of them in accordance with your scope of responsibility.

Apply risk-based security to protect and ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data and technology throughout their lifecycle. Prevent data loss.

A commitment to the responsible use of AI systems goes hand in hand with the desire to promote safety and sustainability in all AI-driven innovations. Ensuring ethical, transparent and accountable AI is essential for building trust and safeguarding individuals and the company.