AI ethical objections - use it, you see the light… says Gartner

Louis Brandeis, the US rights lawyer, famously said that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” and in another letter he qualified this statement as he had been thinking “about the wickedness of people shielding wrongdoers & passing them off (or at least allowing them to pass themselves off) as honest men.” So he came up with another version “If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.” What he meant was that what we now call ‘transparency’ keeps us honest.

Rather than organisations setting up barriers to the use of AI, they should let the light in, make the effort to understand what it is and how it can help, and encourage its use.

Gartner

Citing myths, misconceptions and media clickbait, said Gartner VP analyst Svetlana Sicular said at the Gartner conference in Sydney, lies behind much of the fear and negativity around AI. She claimed that worries about unemployment drops from 60% to under 14% among people who actually use the technology. The problem is one of perceptions not reality. she stated “Once people are actually exposed to AI and asked to make use of it, their concern about job loss drops significantly... the problem boils down to a lack of exposure and understanding.”

Exposure not regulation

Media claims, in particular, keep the doomster fires burning as it makes good headlines and copy. In reality, they rarely understand the technology. This has led her to recommend exposure rather than regulation. Media portrayals, which border on sci-fi fiction, and misconceptions fuel much of this fear, Sicular noted. 

She made the very good point, which I wholly agree with, that the experience of using GenAI is critical in managing expectations. Time and time again I’ve seen sceptics turned into evangelists, when they go through that personal experience of seeing what it can do for them personally, especially at work. Personal agency seems to free people from negativity, that sense of learning and using something new, that genuinely excites you. Keeping GenAI in no-man’s land limits what can be achieved. 

Problem

The problem as evidenced by Microsoft and Cache reports, is that organisations are not allowing people to use the technology. Bottlenecks in HR and senior management mean that huge numbers are using it on the sly. This means that productivity increases are being lost and that you potentially lose ground against the competition. 

Conclusion

We are seeing evidence in both education and the workplace, that huge numbers of people are using GenAI on the sly, as there are barriers put up by their organisations, despite data showing productivity gains. This is to be expected. The technology is very new and very different. It invokes a sense of awe and wonder when used. That ‘aha’ moment is needed to shift the various biases that come to bear when faced with a radically new technology, like AI.