AI Ethics – Too Principled to Fail?

Brent Mittelstadt
Oxford Internet Institute
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3391293

Abstract

AI Ethics is now a global topic of discussion in academic and policy circles. At least 63 public-private initiatives have produced statements describing high-level principles, values, and other tenets to guide the ethical development, deployment, and governance of AI. According to recent meta-analyses, AI Ethics has seemingly converged on a set of principles that closely resemble the four classic principles of medical ethics. Despite the initial credibility granted to a principled approach to AI Ethics by the connection to principles in medical ethics, there are reasons to be concerned about its future impact on AI development and governance. Significant differences exist between medicine and AI development that suggest a principled approach in the latter may not enjoy success comparable to the former. Compared to medicine, AI development lacks (1) common aims and fiduciary duties, (2) professional history and norms, (3) proven methods to translate principles into practice, and (4) robust legal and professional accountability mechanisms. These differences suggest we should not yet celebrate consensus around high-level principles that hide deep political and normative disagreement.

The paper is here.

Shift from professional ethics to business ethics

The outputs of many AI Ethics initiatives resemble professional codes of ethics that address design requirements and the behaviours and values of individual professions.  The legitimacy of particular applications and their underlying business interests remain largely unquestioned.  This approach conveniently steers debate towards the transgressions of unethical individuals, and away from the collective failure of unethical businesses and business models.  Developers will always be constrained by the institutions that employ them. To be truly effective, the ethical challenges of AI cannot conceptualised as individual failures. Going forward, AI Ethics must become an ethics of AI businesses as well.

The Wayfair Walkout Is a Different Kind of Tech Worker Protest

April Glaser
slate.com
Originally posted June 26, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

This time, the Wayfair employees went very public—and they did so during a week of renewed public outrage over the Trump administration’s border policies, thanks to reports of appalling conditions at a facility in Clint, Texas, holding migrant children who had been separated from their families. When Wayfair employees disrupt business on Wednesday by walking out, they’ll highlight that even a company best known for cheap sofas is entangled with a system that has split up families, locked asylum-seekers in cages, and detained children who have been found sick and without access to sufficient food or places to bathe.

This isn’t a typical use of organized labor, but it’s of a piece with the methods used by white-collar workers in the technology industry over the past two years. So far, the movement to force companies to oppose various activities of the Trump administration has had mixed success. Wayfair’s case suggests it will now grow beyond the very largest tech companies—and that employees are realizing signing a petition isn’t their only move.

The Wayfair protesters aren’t fighting to improve their own working conditions: They’re organizing to change their employer’s business practices. Google employees did this in 2018 with a petition that lead to the nonrenewal of a Department of Defense contract to build software systems for drones. Microsoft and Salesforce employees were less successful last year when they sent letters to their respective CEOs demanding they stop contracting with federal immigration agencies. More than 4,200 Amazon employees recently called on the company, unsuccessfully, to reduce its carbon footprint and stop offering cloud services to the oil and gas industry.

The info is here.

When a Colleague Dies, CEOs Change How They Lead

Guoli Chen
www.barrons.com
Originally posted April 8, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

A version of my research, “That Could Have Been Me: Director Deaths, CEO Mortality Salience and Corporate Prosocial Behavior” (co-authored with Craig Crossland and Sterling Huang and forthcoming in Management Science) notes the significant impact a director’s death can have on resource allocation within a firm and on CEO’s activities, both outside and inside the organization.

For example, we saw that CEOs who’d experienced the death of a director on their boards reduced the number of outside directorships they held in the publicly listed firms. At the same time, they increased their number of directorships in non-profit organizations. It seems that thoughts of mortality had inspired a desire to make a lasting, positive contribution to society, or to jettison some priorities in favor of more pro-social ones.

We also saw differences in how CEOs led their firms. In our study, which looked at statistics taken from public firms where a director had died in the years between 1990 and 2013 and compared them with similar firms where no director had died, we saw that CEOs who’d experienced the death of a close colleague spend less efforts on the firms’ immediate growth or financial return activities. We found that there is an increase of costs-of-goods-sold, and companies they lead become less aggressive in expanding their assets and firm size, after the director death events. It could be due to the “quiet life” or “withdrawal behavior” hypotheses which suggest that CEOs become less engaged with the corporate activities after they realize the finite of life span. They may shift their time and focus from corporate to family or community activities.

Meanwhile we also observed that firms lead by these CEOs after the director death experienced an increase their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. CEOs with a heightened awareness of deaths will influence their firms resource allocation towards activities that provide benefits to broader stakeholders, such as employee health plans, more environmentally-friendly manufacturing processes, and charitable contributions.

The info is here.

Rise Of The Chief Ethics Officer

Forbes Insight Team
Forbes.com
Originally posted March 27, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Robert Foehl is now executive-in-residence for business law and ethics at the Ohio University College of Business. In industry, he’s best known as the man who laid the ethical groundwork for Target as the company’s first director of corporate ethics.

At a company like Target, says Foehl, ethical issues arise every day. “This includes questions about where goods are sourced, how they are manufactured, the environment, justice and equality in the treatment of employees and customers, and obligations to the community,” he says. “In retail, the biggest issues tend to be around globalism and how we market to consumers. Are people being manipulated? Are we being discriminatory?”

For Foehl, all of these issues are just part of various ethical frameworks that he’s built over the years; complex philosophical frameworks that look at measures of happiness and suffering, the potential for individual harm, and even the impact of a decision on the “virtue” of the company. As he sees it, bringing a technology like AI into the mix has very little impact on that.

“The fact that you have an emerging technology doesn’t matter,” he says, “since you have thinking you can apply to any situation.” Whether it’s AI or big data or any other new tech, says Foehl, “we still put it into an ethical framework. Just because it involves a new technology doesn’t mean it’s a new ethical concept.”

The info is here.

Behind the Scenes, Health Insurers Use Cash and Gifts to Sway Which Benefits Employers Choose

Marshall Allen
Propublica.org
Originally posted February 20, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

These industry payments can’t help but influence which plans brokers highlight for employers, said Eric Campbell, director of research at the University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities.

“It’s a classic conflict of interest,” Campbell said.

There’s “a large body of virtually irrefutable evidence,” Campbell said, that shows drug company payments to doctors influence the way they prescribe. “Denying this effect is like denying that gravity exists.” And there’s no reason, he said, to think brokers are any different.

Critics say the setup is akin to a single real estate agent representing both the buyer and seller in a home sale. A buyer would not expect the seller’s agent to negotiate the lowest price or highlight all the clauses and fine print that add unnecessary costs.

“If you want to draw a straight conclusion: It has been in the best interest of a broker, from a financial point of view, to keep that premium moving up,” said Jeffrey Hogan, a regional manager in Connecticut for a national insurance brokerage and one of a band of outliers in the industry pushing for changes in the way brokers are paid.

The info is here.

The Value Of Ethics And Trust In Business.. With Artificial Intelligence

Stephen Ibaraki
Forbes.com
Originally posted March 2, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Increasingly contributing positively to society and driving positive change are a growing discourse around the world and hitting all sectors and disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI).

With more than $20 Trillion USD wealth transfer from baby boomers to millennials, and their focus on the environment and social impact, this trend will accelerate. Business is aware and and taking the lead in this movement of advancing the human condition in a responsible and ethical manner. Values-based leadership, diversity, inclusion, investment and long-term commitment are the multi-stakeholder commitments going forward.

“Over the last 12 years, we have repeatedly seen that those companies who focus on transparency and authenticity are rewarded with the trust of their employees, their customers and their investors. While negative headlines might grab attention, the companies who support the rule of law and operate with decency and fair play around the globe will always succeed in the long term,” explained Ethisphere CEO, Timothy Erblich. “Congratulations to all of the 2018 honorees.”

The info is here.

Do Recruiters Need a Code of Ethics?

Steve Bates
Society for Human Resource Management
Originally posted January 9, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Most recruiters behave ethically, knowing that their reputation and their company's brand are on the line, said Joe Shaker Jr., president of Oak Park, Ill.-based Shaker Recruitment Marketing. "They're selling the organization."

But for some external recruiters attempting to beat their competitors, "there's a tremendous temptation to be unethical," said Kevin Wheeler, founder and president of the Future of Talent Institute, a think tank in Fremont, Calif.

"You'll hear about the good, the bad and the ugly," said Wanda Parker, president of The HealthField Alliance, a physician recruiting and consulting firm in Danbury, Conn. She is also president of the National Association of Physician Recruiters (NAPR), which is based in Altamonte Springs, Fla. "There are some recruiters who cut all kinds of corners and will do whatever they can to make a buck."

"It's very much like the Wild West," said Fred Coon, founder, chairman and CEO of Stewart, Cooper & Coon, a human capital strategies firm based in Phoenix. "It's a free-for-all."

The info is here.

A Top Goldman Banker Raised Ethics Concerns. Then He Was Gone.

Emily Flitter, Kate Kelly and David Enrich
The New York Times
Originally posted September 11, 2018

By the tight-lipped standards of Goldman Sachs, the phone call from one of the firm’s most senior investment bankers was explosive.

James C. Katzman, a Goldman partner and the leader of its West Coast mergers-and-acquisitions practice, dialed the bank’s whistle-blower hotline in 2014 to complain about what he regarded as a range of unethical practices, according to accounts by people close to Mr. Katzman, which a Goldman spokesman confirmed. His grievances included an effort by Goldman to hire a customer’s child and colleagues’ repeated attempts to obtain and then share confidential client information.

Mr. Katzman expected lawyers at the firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, which monitored the hotline, to investigate his allegations and share them with independent members of Goldman’s board of directors, the people close to Mr. Katzman said.

The complaints were an extraordinary example of a senior employee’s taking on what he perceived to be corporate wrongdoing at an elite Wall Street bank. But they were never independently investigated or fully relayed to the Goldman board.

The information is here.

Pharma exec had 'moral requirement' to raise price 400%

Wayne Drash
CNN.com
Originally published September 12, 2018

 A pharmaceutical company executive defended his company's recent 400% drug price increase, telling the Financial Times that his company had a "moral requirement to sell the product at the highest price." The head of the US Food and Drug Administration blasted the executive in a response on Twitter.

Nirmal Mulye, founder and president of Nostrum Pharmaceuticals, commented in a story Tuesday about the decision to raise the price of an antibiotic mixture called nitrofurantoin from about $500 per bottle to more than $2,300. The drug is listed by the World Health Organization as an "essential" medicine for lower urinary tract infections.

"I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can," Mulye told the Financial Times, "to sell the product for the highest price."

The info is here.

Building An Ethics-First Employee Culture Is Crucial For All Leaders

Patrick Quinlan
Forbes.com
Originally posted July 25, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

These issues — harassment, bias, sexism — are nothing new in the tech sector but, now more than ever before, employees are taking matters into their own hands to make sure ethical business practices and values are upheld, even when leadership fails to do so.

In the last few years, we have seen the entire employer-employee paradigm shift, from offices embracing open floor plans to leaders encouraging team bonding activities. Underlying this massive business transformation is a stronger emphasis on the people who make up organizations, their values and their opinions. What we’ve borne witness to is the rise of empowered employees.

For leaders, shifting gears to focus on people first may feel scary. No one wants their employees to point out something is wrong at the company. But if instilling core ethical values is truly your objective, openness to criticism is part of the job description. Your commitment to promoting a safe, empowering space is not only beneficial for your employees — it ultimately strengthens your company’s culture, values, ethics — and therefore your company’s success long-term.

When leaders lead proactively, encouraging employees to come forward with an opinion or idea, employees feel safe, heard and ready to improve their company culture from the inside out. Whether you’re running a technology giant or a small startup, it’s no overnight shift. But you can start small by asking questions, taking feedback seriously and celebrating your team’s autonomy.

The information is here.

Ethics Policies Don't Build Ethical Cultures

Dori Meinert
www.shrm.org
Originally posted June 19, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Most people think they would never voluntarily commit an unethical or illegal act. But when Gallagher asked how many people in the audience had ever received a speeding ticket, numerous hands were raised. Similarly, employees rationalize their misuse of company supplies all the time, such as shopping online on their company-issued computer during work hours.

"It's easy to make unethical choices when they are socially acceptable," he said.

But those seemingly small choices can start people down a slippery slope.

Be on the Lookout for Triggers

No one plans to destroy their career by breaking the law or violating their company's ethics policy. There are usually personal stressors that push them over the edge, triggering a "fight or flight" response. At that point, they're not thinking rationally, Gallagher said.

Financial problems, relationship problems or health issues are the most common emotional stressors, he said.

"If you're going to be an ethical leader, are you paying attention to your employees' emotional triggers?"

The information is here.

Can Employees Force A Company To Be More Ethical?

Enrique Dans
Forbes.com
Originally posted June 19, 2018

Here is the conclusion:

Whatever the outcome, it now seems increasingly clear that if you do not agree you’re your company’s practices, if they breach basic ethics, you should listen to your conscience and make your voice heard. Which is all fine and good in a rapidly expanding technology sector such as the United States where you are likely to find another job quickly, but what about in other sectors, or in countries with higher unemployment rates or where government and industry are more closely aligned?

Can we and should we put a price on our principles? Is having a conscience the unique preserve of the wealthy and highly skilled? Obviously not, and it is good news that some employees at US companies are setting a precedent. If companies are not going to behave ethically of their own volition, at least we can count on their employees to embarrass them into doing so. Perhaps other countries and companies will follow suit…

The article is here.

Business Class

John Benjamin
The New Republic
Originally posted May 14, 2018

Students in the country’s top MBA programs pride themselves on their open-mindedness. This is, after all, what they’ve been sold: American business schools market their ability to train the kinds of broadly competent, intellectually receptive people that will help solve the problems of a global economy.

But in truth, MBA programs are not the open forums advertised in admissions brochures. Behind this façade, they are ideological institutions committed to a strict blend of social liberalism and economic conservatism. Though this fusion may be the favorite of American elites—the kinds of people who might repeat that tired line “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative”—it takes a strange form in business school. Elite business schooling is tailored to promote two types of solutions to the big problems that arise in society: either greater innovation or freer markets. Proposals other than what’s essentially more business are brushed aside, or else patched over with a type of liberal politics that’s heavy on rhetorical flair but light on relevance outside privileged circles.

It is in this closed ideological loop that we wannabe masters of the universe often struggle to think clearly about the common good or what it takes to achieve it.

The information is here.

Wells Fargo's ethics hotline calls are on the rise

Matt Egan
CNN.com
Originally posted June 19, 2018

A top Wells Fargo (WFC) executive said on Tuesday that employees are increasingly using the bank's confidential hotline to report bad behavior.

"Our volumes increased on our ethics line. We're glad they did. People raised their hand," said Theresa LaPlaca, who leads a conduct office that Wells Fargo created last year.

"That is success for me," LaPlaca said at the ACFE Global Fraud Conference in Las Vegas.

Reassuring Wells Fargo workers to trust the bank's ethics hotline is no easy task. Nearly half a dozen workers told CNNMoney in 2016 that they were fired by Wells Fargo after calling the hotline to try to stop the bank's fake-account problem.

Last year, Wells Fargo was ordered to re-hire and pay $5.4 million to a whistleblower who was fired after calling the ethics hotline to report suspected fraud. Wells Fargo faces multiple lawsuits from employees who say they protested sales misconduct. The bank said in a filing that it also faces state law whistleblower actions filed with the Labor Department alleging retaliation.

The information is here.

Getting Ethics Training Right for Leaders and Employees

Deloitte
The Wall Street Journal
Originally posted April 9, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Ethics training has needed a serious redesign for some time, and we are seeing three changes to make training more effective. First, many organizations recognize that compliance training is not enough. Simply knowing the rules and how to call the ethics helpline does not necessarily mean employees will raise their voice when they see ethical issues in the workplace. Even if employees want to say something they often hesitate, worried that they may not be heard, or even worse, that voicing may lead to formal or informal retaliation. Overcoming this hesitation requires training to help employees learn how to voice their values with in-person, experiential practice in everyday workplace situations. More and more organizations are investing in this training, as a way to simultaneously support employees, reduce risk and proactively reshape their culture.

Another significant change in ethics training is a focus on helping senior leaders consider how their own ethical leadership shapes the culture. This requires leaders to examine the signals they send in their everyday behaviors, and how these signals make employees feel safe to voice ideas and concerns. In my training sessions with senior leaders, we use exercises that help them identify the leadership behaviors that create such trust, and those that may be counter-productive. We then redesign the everyday processes, such as the weekly meeting or decision-making models, that encourage voice and explicitly elevate ethical concerns.

Third, more organizations are seeing the connection between ethics and greater sense of purpose in the workplace. Employee engagement, performance and retention often increases when employees feel they are contributing something beyond profit creation. Ethics training can help employees see this connection and practice the so-called giver strategies that help others, their organizations, and their own careers at the same time.

The article is here.

How One Bad Employee Can Corrupt a Whole Team

Stephen Dimmock and William C. Gerken
Harvard Business Review
Originally posted March 5, 2018

One bad apple, the saying goes, can ruin the bunch. So, too, with employees.

Our research on the contagiousness of employee fraud tells us that even your most honest employees become more likely to commit misconduct if they work alongside a dishonest individual. And while it would be nice to think that the honest employees would prompt the dishonest employees to better choices, that’s rarely the case.

Among co-workers, it appears easier to learn bad behavior than good.

For managers, it is important to realize that the costs of a problematic employee go beyond the direct effects of that employee’s actions — bad behaviors of one employee spill over into the behaviors of other employees through peer effects. By under-appreciating these spillover effects, a few malignant employees can infect an otherwise healthy corporate culture.

History — and current events — are littered with outbreaks of misconduct among co-workers: mortgage underwriters leading up to the financial crisis, stock brokers at boiler rooms such as Stratton Oakmont, and cross-selling by salespeople at Wells Fargo.

The information is here.

Monkeys? Humans? The ethics of testing diesel fumes

Joel Gunter
BBC News
Originally published January 30, 2018

"These tests on monkeys or even humans cannot be justified ethically in any way," said Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks called the experiments "abominable", opposition politician Stephan Weil said they were "absurd and abhorrent".

But in a world where animal testing and paid medical testing on humans is commonplace, why have these particular tests provoked such outrage?

The exact nature of the VW tests is not known, as their methodology and findings have not been made public, but two independent scientists who have conducted air pollution tests on human volunteers told the BBC that similar tests on humans are commonplace.

"There have been hundreds of such studies, in most countries in the world, over the last 30 years," said Frank Kelly, professor of environmental health at King's College London. "They are funded by national governments, following strict ethical review, to understand the impact of emissions on human health."

The controversial, and possibly unethical, aspect of the VW testing was that it had been funded by a lobby group rather than an independent, government-funded body, he said.

The article is here.

Business ethics: am I boring you?

Katherine Bradshaw
The Guardian
Originally published November 8, 2012

Here is an excerpt:

We need to bridge the gap between ethics programmes and daily worklife – and stories can help us do that.

No matter how sophisticated we are as a society, stories continue to be our preferred way of communicating and sharing our experiences of life. From a book at bedtime to the latest cliffhanger of our favourite soap, stories help us connect and communicate our emotions and values with each other.

Business ethics training at its worst can include material which seems distant to staff and how they do their day-to-day job. A set of compliance dictats communicated with slides animated with clip art, or an eLearning programme with easy multiple choice questions conducted in isolation, is unlikely to engage anyone with what really matters.

Ethical values need to be embedded into company culture so that they are reflected in the way that business is actually done. This requires an ethics programme with objectives beyond just imparting knowledge and raising awareness of expected standards – the challenge is to communicate their relevance and importance at all levels and locations in a way that impacts on understanding, decisions and behaviours.

The article is here.

Apple vs. Ivanka Trump: Competing ethics collide in China

Erika Kinetz
Associated Press
Originally published January 25, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Ivanka Trump's company, meanwhile, has called supply chain integrity a "top priority," but maintains that suppliers are the responsibility of its licensees — companies it contracts with to manufacture tons of Ivanka Trump handbags, shoes and clothes. The brand doesn't publish the identities of its manufacturers. In fact, its supply chains have only grown more opaque since the First Daughter took on her White House role, the Associated Press showed last year.

"That mode of thinking is the dominant mode of thinking," said Seth Gurgel, who has worked on Chinese legal and labor rights issues for more than a decade. "They'd be a textbook company that would want to hide behind licensee protections."

Big brands with dedicated suppliers tend to be more invested in workplace conditions than smaller brands like Ivanka Trump's. But the political and ethical calculus surrounding Ivanka Trump's name — and her namesake brand, which she still owns but no longer closely manages — shifted radically when she became an adviser to her father in the White House.

"If Ivanka could be pressured or convinced to become a global leader or speak out about abuses in the apparel industry, she could be a huge ally for labor NGOs and worker groups around the world," Gurgel said.

The article is here.

Culture and Business Ethics

Marshall Schminke
www.ethicalsystems.com
Originally published October 3, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

What do most companies overlook when it comes to organizational design?

Supervisors. Despite some high profile missteps, organizations generally do a pretty good job of making ethics a front-and-center issue at the upper levels.  Likewise, they invest heavily in education and training at the level of the rank-and-file worker.  But as with so many strategically important issues, low-to-mid-level supervisors are often ignored.  This is troublesome, because research shows the single most important factor in driving employees’ ethical actions is not what top managers or coworkers say or do.  Rather, it is the immediate supervisor—and whether he or she is capable of creating an ethically supportive work culture that employees experience every day—that matters most.  Yet in most cases, these “sergeants and lieutenants” of the workplace receive relatively little attention when it comes to ethics and ethics training.

How can E&C teams better emphasize ethics vs. compliance?

Culture. It’s not that rules aren’t important.  They are.  And they must be understood and followed.  But complex business environments—and complex ethical rules and standards—cannot address every situation employees might encounter.  Therefore, the only real insurance organizations have for getting the best ethical effort possible from their employees is to bake it into the culture and climate, where it becomes second nature to employees trying to do their best in a tough business world.

What have you learned as a part of the ES culture measurement working group?

As a culture and climate researcher for years, this experience has been truly eye-opening for me.  It has introduced me to different perspectives on culture and, in turn, exposed me to completely different ways of thinking about how to create and maintain effective ethical cultures.  For example, of the eight components of ethical culture identified by the Ethical Systems culture measurement working group, I had only a passing familiarity with the ethical awareness and ethical leadership components.  This experience has not only improved my understanding of those components, but has also heightened my awareness of how they fit and interact with the other six components.

The information is here.