{"id":5579,"date":"2022-11-14T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:10197\/uncategorized\/how-responsible-ai-is-ethically-shaping-our-future"},"modified":"2025-07-18T14:26:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T18:26:28","slug":"how-responsible-ai-is-ethically-shaping-our-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningguild.com\/articles\/how-responsible-ai-is-ethically-shaping-our-future","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018Responsible AI’ Is Ethically Shaping Our Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

The PwC 2022 AI Business Survey<\/a> finds that \u201cAI success is becoming the rule, not the exception,\u201d and, according to PwC US, published in the 2021 AI Predictions<\/em><\/a> & 2021 <\/em>Responsible AI Insights Report<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>\u201cResponsible AI is the leading priority among industry leaders for AI applications in 2021, with emphasis on improving privacy, explainability, bias detection, and governance.\u201d<\/p>

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is of course already ever-present in our daily lives, for example on our phones: Siri, Alexa, and Google support our searches and bring us recommendations. While the use and application of AI across businesses is spreading, knowledge about AI and the implications of its use are not showing the same exponential growth.<\/p>

This article seeks to shed some light on AI as a topic generally, as well in regard to ethical practices and implementations: What AI does, what \u201cresponsible’ or \u201c\u2018trustworthy\u201d AI is, why this is such an important topic, and how the drafting of the European Union’s AI Act is already shaping how organizations and businesses approach the development and the deployment of AI technology today. \u201cTrustworthy\u201d AI is more than just morally sound; it is more tailored and effective than its less-considered competitors.<\/p>

The impact of AI<\/h2>

What is AI<\/a>? AI is a fast-evolving family of technologies that are already contributing to a wide array of economic and societal benefits, and they do this across the entire spectrum of industries as well as social activities.<\/p>

AI technology<\/a> can be used to find information, improve predictions, optimize operations and resource allocations, and personalize digital solutions and journeys. Most critically, AI can be trained to do things that previously only humans were capable of\u2014but AI can do these things much faster and at much larger scales, a process which in digital transformation<\/a> is coined \u201cautomation.\u201d As a result, the ability to automate processes of analysis and information processing has revolutionized almost every industry globally.<\/p>

From the individual user to global organizations, this is of course a very powerful and impactful tool. However, as with every tool, the goal must be to implement such groundbreaking technology in a sustainable and responsible way. The forerunner in regulatory leadership in this area is the European Union (EU), which is currently drafting the EU AI Act, expected to be published in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>

The origin of tech regulation<\/h2>

In order to understand such regulations and their importance, it is useful to look at an example of the past and the positive impact regulations can, and should, have.<\/p>

When internet giants started to gather more and more information about individuals in the late 2000s, services improved and users enjoyed a growing number of appealing features.<\/p>

This continuous improvement of functionality by the tech giants, and the data-capture required in order to implement it, grew fast\u2014and became increasingly problematic\u2014especially since, as is often the case, public awareness lagged behind developments.<\/p>

Users of the new services were of course exploring and enjoying the convenience of the digital age, yet they were often oblivious to the data-gathering taking place in the background\u2014and unaware that this data capture was essentially funding the \u201cfree\u201d platforms they used.<\/p>

Users begin to understand the implications of data sharing<\/h3>

Early social media users saw recommended connections\u2014family and friends\u2014in a relatively non-intrusive manner. However, as face recognition and tagging in photos improved and added to usability and user excitement, AI began to make connections between previously unconnected users in the same photo. This led some users to become increasingly concerned about their digital footprint online.<\/p>

Consumers gradually began to understand that anything put online might be accessible to anyone who was interested, possibly forever. Of particular concern for some users was the possibility that an individual’s potential future employers might find users tagged in photos\u2014and that they, the user, had little control over privacy settings for these images.<\/p>

Concerns also rose significantly when users realized that many apps had mapped their entire contacts library, automatically yet non-consensually. I personally remember seeing several of my contacts and their details, such as their mobile number, on social media sites\u2014knowing that these were friends or colleagues who had purposefully decided not to join social media platforms exactly for that reason, a desire to protect their personal data. Yet here they were, included and \u201cknown\u201d within the digital ecosystem, regardless of whether or not they wanted to be included. These profiles of non-users became known as \u201cshadow profiles.\u201d<\/p>

There are, of course, many more examples. I have merely chosen this one as a personal experience. The takeaway here is that as functionality and personalization grew, concerns also slowly grew.<\/p>

The GDPR emerges<\/h3>

The EU led the way and developed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect personal data<\/a>. This regulation came into force in early 2018, setting strict limits on data use and clear expectations on consent. GDPR has been so successful that it has been adopted globally as the standard, and it is rightfully celebrated as a huge success.<\/p>

Critical to the success of the GDPR was its unique stance on territoriality: It requires any organization doing business in the EU or marketing to EU citizens to meet specific data protection standards. The result of this was that all international businesses were required to meet GDPR standards as a baseline, which pushed the global regulatory consensus forward in a significant and positive way.<\/p>

The next phase of regulation<\/h2>

Having learned lessons from such progress in digitalization, data capture, and personalization<\/a>, the EU is now developing its AI Act in order to regulate the development and application of AI. The goal of this Act is to ensure an ethical use of AI and to prevent the uses of AI in ways that are discriminatory<\/a> or violate human rights.<\/p>

All AI applications will have to abide by the framework of \u201ctrustworthy AI,\u201d which is defined by the Act. Given the role of the EU’s GDPR in shaping data privacy law, the EU’s AI Act is expected to be similarly influential and impactful and to become the global standard in this space.<\/p>

The EU framework for \u2018responsible’ AI<\/h3>

The way the EU framework will deliver this vision for responsible AI, sometimes referred to as RAI, is by emphasizing the following four ethical pillars of safe AI development:<\/p>