Take coal mining. No rational person would oppose clean energy. But what will happen to those communities when the AI solutions for lower-carbon generation have replaced them. Put a human face on to the indirect impacts of breakthroughs in energy tech. Or take the trucking industry and the entire infrastructure around it. As autonomous electric vehicles take to the roads, what happens to all the people affected – from gas station workers to roadside trucker restaurants and more? Or take retail. As checking out at a store comes to involve simply walking out with the goods, what happens to all the checkout clerks with families to feed?
So, what might be the way forward? The growing focus on ethical AI is a good start. But we need to widen the aperture of the ethical lens. Sure, government might play a role. It could maybe do this through a series of programs like the moon shot of the 1960s, creating a national goal and igniting a passion to solve some of our biggest challenges through new AI platforms. But government can’t do this alone. Especially since it always faces the risk of unintended consequences – since regulation can have a stifling effect if it merely tries to protect the status quo or substitute money for meaning.
Instead, here’s another idea for an approach. How about if the tech industry came together and recognized that our most precious resource – both as an economy and a society – is underutilized human capacity? And not just in terms of intellect and ingenuity, but also creativity and people skills. A public/private partnership focused on using the tremendous benefits of technology to lift up the displaced would not only be a positive way to meet a societal imperative, but also a potential economic energizer offering a huge global return on investment.
If such an effort could get underway, it would create a level of awareness that would resonate across all industries using AI. But, as ever, the hard part is getting started. So, if you’re on the board of a company that’s committed – as most now are – to having a positive impact on society, how do you begin to make a difference?
From a holistic perspective, when a leadership team launches its company’s AI program – whatever the use case – it should make sure it answers three questions in its work plan from day one:
- What’s the role and responsibility of the company we’re representing toward various groups of stakeholders?
- Who’s going to be directly impacted by the company’s AI initiatives, within and beyond the organization – and who’s going to be impacted negatively, including indirectly in wider society?
- How can we collaborate with others in the ecosystem to help and support the communities of people who’ll be negatively impacted?
Answering these questions puts in place three touchstones that encourage a board to think of the potentially displaced people as stakeholders – and enable it to apply the same level of transparency to the impacts on them as it does with other stakeholder groups.
This brings us back to the core purpose of building a better working world – which is about using tech not just to solve an immediate problem, but to generate longer-term and societal value by raising all boats. Which, in turn, means focusing not just on those who’ll benefit from AI, but also those for whom it’ll have the opposite effect. And when it comes to ensuring we use technology to create purposeful lives for all, we’re all in it together - because it’s in all our interest.