How to use AI responsibly to address ethical and risk challenges

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In our The future of professionals report, we address the many concerns and challenges that are raised around the use and application of AI in professional and business domains.abilities. Legal and accounting firms must figure out how to use AI ethically and responsibly. Thomson Reuters has been a thought leader in developing principles to guide practices and help our clients navigate the complexity of AI for decades. As generative artificial intelligence continues to infiltrate our personal and professional lives, we strive to provide the most current research and best practices in benefit these technologies with responsibility and transparency.

Ethical and security issues of AI

While many law and accounting firms are trying to determine their AI Practices and Governance, a number of issues need to be resolved. Older generations are challenged to adapt to the changes that the integration of AI into professional services brings and may offer resistance out of fear that AI will push ethics out the window. As younger generations examine the possibilities opened up by generative AI. However, there seems to be little debate that the companies that adopt AI will be the ones that move forward.

In many sectors, 15% of professionals declared Data security and ethics are their biggest fear, closely followed by lack of transparency and accountability. The appeal of AI is that it can facilitate many repetitive and time-consuming activities and tasks within the operations of a business or professional department. It has also been found to improve mental health by relieving anxiety, isolation and burnout by creating more tool-based capabilities for this type of work, increasing the time professionals have to maintain relationships with customers and develop their customer base.

While AI can help businesses and departments accomplish beneficial work, there are ethical considerations to take into account. AI can help fraudsters conduct their business more efficiently and accurately. It is also important to always keep in mind that AI generates responses based on algorithms created by humans and information provided by humans. As such, humans should be held responsible for checking and verifying AI-generated facts.

The rush to leverage AI has created some situations that have highlighted the need for consent and accountability, including cases where the AI ​​has “hallucinated” a response – i.e. she improvised a response based on the information she had – which led to legal and ethical consequences. Since AI does not provide any data on the source of answers, ensuring a human validation process should be part of AI policies. AI is also subject tomitigation of risk of bias, in which the data used to train a model can result in errors favoring one outcome over another. This can lead to a lack of trust and fairness.

Future of Professionals Report How AI is the catalyst for transforming every aspect of work

Use AI responsibly

The United States issued aExecutive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligencewhich establishes the principles and guidelines that federal agencies must follow when implementing an AI system. It also provides a framework for working with various stakeholders. The Future of Professionals report shows that 52% of professionals believe that regulations governing AI professional ethics are a necessity, and 25% believe that governments should design and supervise professional ethics regulations.

Key areas of AI governance frameworks should cover encryption and authentication protocols, frequent auditing and testing procedures, traceability, employee training on appropriate and ethical use of AI and best practices for securing and protecting confidential data. Ultimately, businesses and services should be able to understand how an algorithm achieves its results and where the data comes from. Because it extracts data from large datasets, those datasets must be legitimate and qualified to get the most accurate and relevant result.

If AI is to be integrated into your workflow, human-centered design must be at the heart of the initiative. Transparency and accountability are all crucial to maintaining trust with customers, users and employees. Bias must be avoided, fairness must be encouraged, and safety must be the top priority.

Given the private and confidential nature of the information professionals work with, we believe that developing internal regulations and governance for AI at the enterprise level is essential to establishing trust, accountability and transparency around consent and confidentiality of customer information. It is important to understand the principles behind AI ethics and ensure your organization has a framework that is right for the business and your customers.

Confidence in your adoption of AI for all stakeholders lies in the ability of professionals to provide high levels of service, access information on the use of AI, and foster a culture of mitigation and risk awareness. For more information, download theThe future of professionalsreport.