Blog: AI Ethics for Business Leaders

Post #13: Business AI Ethics Director’s Forum

As we continue our Business AI Ethics journey at the Harvard University Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, we are excited to announce an upcoming forum focused on the critical intersection of business and AI ethics. Our aim is to convene a select group of corporate board directors who are not only interested in advancing AI initiatives within their organizations but are also deeply committed to fostering responsible and ethical AI practices.

Post #12: We’re hiring for two student researcher positions on our Business AI Ethics team

Are you a Harvard student interested in AI ethics aligned to the business community? Our weekly essays published on this site will give you a solid foundation of our research and work to date. We are aiming to hire two current Harvard students (part time) for the 2024-2025 academic year for the following positions:

Research Assistant. In furtherance of our Business AI Ethics initiative, we are seeking a student-...

Post #11: Please Consider Joining our Business AI Ethics Community!

Building upon the foundation laid in our previous essay where we introduced our Multistakeholder Business AI Ethics Community, we are thrilled to embark on the next phase of our journey. As we continue to champion ethical AI governance – with an emphasis on implications for corporate boards and the C-Suite, we recognize the importance of active engagement and collaboration from a diverse set of stakeholders. Today, we are excited to invite you to join us in this endeavor by providing your valuable insights and...

Post #10: Join Our Multistakeholder Business AI Ethics Community!

In our previous essay, we emphasized the necessity of collaboration among diverse stakeholders to effectively navigate the interdisciplinary nature of AI ethics. This week, we pursue two objectives: first, we examine the practical realities and advantages of a multistakeholderism approach to AI ethics. Second, we back our words with action by extending a special invitation for collaborators to join our Business AI Ethics community, both within and beyond the Harvard / Cambridge ecosystem.

Post #9: How Bioethics Can Inform Ethical AI Governance

As the global AI community grapples with the task of crafting practical operating models for AI governance, there is a need for new applied frameworks that adapt learnings from other domains where ethics has been successfully incorporated. Bioethics offers the most compelling example of such a domain.

In this week’s essay, we explore the core discipline of Bioethics and consider the lessons we can glean from its history, principles, and practical applications within the field. Our aim is to extrapolate the established frameworks of Bioethics to...

Post #8: Into the Abyss: Examining AI Failures and Lessons Learned

Amidst the dynamic integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across diverse sectors, instances of AI initiatives veering off course serve as poignant reminders (and cautionary tales) of the practical perils of AI development and deployment. These episodes underscore the multifaceted risks associated with AI integration and help frame conversations on the societal implications of AI-driven technologies in more practical terms. By examining these cases of AI misalignment, we unearth invaluable insights into the immediate ramifications that accompany the integration of AI into our lives....

Post #7: The External Forces Influencing Business AI Governance

This essay outlines the external forces influencing the responsible and ethical design, development, and deployment of AI systems by businesses. Companies are moving fast to launch generative AI applications to remain competitive in their fields and produce innovations relevant to their customers and other key stakeholders. AI-fueled transformation is happening across all sectors at breakneck speed, with new applications outpacing associated governance protocols. As discussed in previous essays, AI is an incredibly powerful technology that yields risks that can be material for both the...

Post #6: The Caremark Rule and Board Level AI Risk Management

In a previous essay, we outlined the relatively sparse legal and regulatory global landscape for AI as driven by government/policymakers as key stakeholders. We noted in this previous piece that the Caremark standard governs board oversight of company risks, with direct implications for a company’s AI program. See In re Caremark Intern, Inc. Derivative Litigation 698 A.2d 959 (1996). We contended that the principles enunciated in Caremark have far-reaching implications for a US board.

In this essay, we further examine the Caremark rule...

Post #5: Reimagining AI Ethics, Moving Beyond Principles to Organizational Values

It’s difficult to find an organization that hasn’t publicly stated its adherence to some externally formulated set of AI principles. As Emre Kazim and Adriano Soares Koshiyama highlight in their insightful piece, “A High-Level Overview of AI Ethics”, in 2020 a mere 80 organizations across academia, NGOs, civil society, and commercial sectors had issued statements affirming their adherence to these external principles. (Special acknowledgement to Kazim and Koshiyama for their persuasive work, which has deeply influenced the ideas presented in this essay). With the explosion of generative AI experimentation and adoption, there are now hundreds, if not thousands, of organizations embracing this principles-based approach to steer their AI endeavors.... Read more about Post #5: Reimagining AI Ethics, Moving Beyond Principles to Organizational Values

Post #4: The State of Global AI Regulation

In our previous blog post, we highlighted the primary stakeholders across the AI governance landscape, the unique roles they play in shaping the collective global response to AI risks, and the areas of misalignment (and material gaps) that exist in their architecture and approaches.

In this post, we set forth the contextual legal framework driven by the government as a primary stakeholder. As we suggest, extant laws are inadequate. In nearly all instances, they were not designed to govern many of the new realities arising from AI's ubiquitous uptake. This gap between existing laws and decision-makers' need for clarity both motivates and necessitates our research.... Read more about Post #4: The State of Global AI Regulation