BCG – Weekly Brief: Ensuring AI Lives Up to Your Values
To BCG’s network around the world,
Artificial intelligence holds enormous promise for all stakeholders: better performance for companies and superior and more personalized products and services for customers. For many businesses, it’s a capability that has only grown in importance since the pandemic began.
But we’ve seen serious downsides, too. For example, there have been equity issues in AI algorithms used for housing and mortgage offers, as well as in recruiting and hiring, because of racial and gender biases baked into the data on which the algorithms are based.
At BCG, we believe deeply in the power of AI at scale to transform businesses and deepen customer relationships. But we also recognize the enormous responsibility that comes with using AI. Like most of you reading this, I’m not a data scientist. Trying to figure out what is underneath different algorithms and how to determine the appropriateness of the results they produce seems very daunting.
My BCG colleagues have written a new article that not only highlights the core principles of responsible AI but also gives six steps for putting these principles into practice—measures you can start without massive investment, evolving them over time. They are designed to ensure that companies can walk the talk on responsible AI, translating intent into reality. Underlying these steps are two concepts that I believe should be at the heart of all corporate leaders’ decision making.
The first is the notion that companies must become increasingly bionic as they strive for long-term success. This means rapidly adopting emerging digital technologies but getting the most from them by integrating human strengths. Responsible AI needs responsible AI leadership—a diverse internal team with their hands on the pulse of all AI initiatives. It takes people to make sure that AI systems are robust and people to be aware of all the ways those systems might fail.
Also essential to building responsible AI is aligning initiatives with the company’s corporate purpose—the intrinsic values of the organization and the positive impact its leaders and employees hope to make. If AI is grounded in purpose, the organization is better positioned to build the transparency and earn the trust needed for sustainable success.
I hope you’ll find the practical steps of this article useful as you navigate the requirements for building responsible AI into your organization. It’s featured below, along with related content I’m also pleased to share with you.
Look forward to connecting again next week.
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Rich Lesser
Chief Executive Officer
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