Are you aware of the potential ethical concerns surrounding the use of AI in decision-making processes?
AI-powered technologies are changing the way associations and nonprofits work. From streamlining tasks to improving content creation and member and donor engagement and retention, the possibilities are endless! However, it's also important to be mindful of the ethical considerations that come with this transformation.
Hey everyone, Tamer here, and welcome to the Sidecar Water Cooler Show, where we'll get you mentally hydrated, educated and motivated to have a productive work week.
AI Ethics and Its Impact Today
Artificial intelligence is a game-changing technology that has the ability to completely alter many aspects of our life. But, it also raises significant ethical concerns. For instance, transparency, privacy, bias and discrimination, automatic decision-making, and safety are some of the top issues that must be addressed.
AI-powered deep fakes, which can create convincing fake videos or audio recordings that spread disinformation, raise questions about transparency and fake news.
Privacy concerns are raised when AI-powered voice assistants, such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant record and store users' conversations without their knowledge or consent.
The use of face recognition by the Metropolitan Police in London, which mistakenly classified members of the public as potential criminals 96% of the time, raised human rights concerns.
Bias and discrimination have been seen in the case of Amazon's recruitment tool that penalized resumes with words like "women'' or "female."
Automatic decision-making in industries such as medicine and finance, where AI-driven algorithms can have significant impacts on people's lives, could be an obstacle to fair decision-making processes.
Safety concerns have been highlighted by the incident in 2018 where a self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona.
These are just some of the ethical concerns surrounding the different uses of AI. Others include accuracy, inequality, and accountability.
How Can It Impact Associations?
But let’s think of associations and nonprofits and consider an association-specific scenario in which an AI-driven algorithm selects grant recipients.
On the one hand, applying AI can increase fairness and speed up decision-making, ensuring that qualified beneficiaries receive their grants as soon as possible.
On the other hand, inherent biases in the data used to train the algorithm could become an impediment to fair grant distribution, which could increase inequity in the decision-making processes.
In this scenario, the initial ethical promise of adopting AI is undermined by its shortcomings.
Building an Association AI Ethics Plan
So what can association leaders do to address the ethical concerns of AI?
- Identify potential biases during data collection and training.
- Ensure diversity among those developing and using AI systems, demanding that AI benefit everyone.
- Advocate for transparency and accountability.
- Invest in education and training.
- Continue to discuss the ethical implications and ways to address them.
It's important to remember that while AI has the potential to do amazing things, it also has its challenges and risks. We must raise awareness and advocate for better governance and regulation of this technology to ensure that our embrace of technology doesn't compromise our core values.
What about you? Did you experience any ethical dilemmas with AI at your association lately?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Please keep following the Sidecar water cooler show to get the latest on this ongoing issue and many other nourishing conversations.
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