MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have assembled an international panel of AI experts that includes academics and practitioners to help us gain insights into how responsible artificial intelligence (RAI) is being implemented in organizations worldwide. This month’s question for our panelists: Should an organization tie its RAI efforts to its overall corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts? The results present a mixed picture. ….
Inherent Alignment Between RAI and CSR
Among the panelists who highlighted the inherent alignment between RAI and CSR principles and objectives is Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov, chief AI officer at eBay. As he explains, “Many of the core ideas behind responsible AI, such as bias prevention, transparency, and fairness, are already aligned with the fundamental principles of corporate social responsibility, so it should already feel natural for an organization to tie in its AI efforts.” For example, as Linda Leopold, head of responsible AI and data at H&M Group, notes, “There is a close connection between responsible AI and efforts to promote social and environmental sustainability.”
Similarly, Vipin Gopal, chief data and analytics officer at Eli Lilly, adds, “Many dimensions of responsible AI reflect companies’ accountability to themselves and to their stakeholders and hence are fundamentally linked to CSR.” Finally, in thinking about CSR and related environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives, Richard Benjamins, chief AI and data strategist at Telefónica, observes that “in organizations that use AI at scale, there is a close connection to all ESG elements.”
Source: Should Organizations Link Responsible AI and Corporate Social Responsibility? It’s Complicated.