From the course: Leveraging Generative AI for Project Management: Strategic Insights and Future Trends

Ethical considerations in AI project management

From the course: Leveraging Generative AI for Project Management: Strategic Insights and Future Trends

Ethical considerations in AI project management

- AI is not a technological challenge. It's a human challenge with all possible ramifications and unintended consequences. Projects can benefit from AI to improve their performance. At the same time, projects are the tool used to create AI solutions, like what we saw in the previous lessons. If you open the news today, you will see expert opinions, ranging from extreme positions like AI make human civilization extinct to AI will be a tool that humans will always have complete control over. We can all have any opinion, but there are actions we must put in place as project managers to ensure that the basic principles of ethics are considered along the way. And first, we must consider the workforce. AI will impact employees, suppliers, and several other stakeholders. We need to be mindful that these impacts may not be the expected ones, and we can create more inequality and problems in society due to the AI. We are responsible for ensuring that AI projects are developed with the mindset of considering humans at the center and that technology will support them and not dispose them. The second aspect is bias. Since AI learned from data, if your data has a bias, AI will have a bias. You can see several examples of prejudice against minorities and underrepresented groups in some AI hiring tools, creating legal and image challenges for some of the world's largest organizations. The third is privacy. AI uses information to learn. A significant portion of this information comes from users who are unaware of how the information is being gathered and how it's being used to make decisions that affect them. We must be fully aware of the type of data we use in machine learning algorithms. Another is mistakes. Yes, mistakes. Poorly constructed algorithms can make mistakes. Some generative AI apps can fabricate information entirely and present it to you as reality. This behavior is technically called hallucinations. The consequences of these wrong instructions can range from a small setback to extremely relevant challenges. The final aspect I want to mention is the long-term impact. We cannot develop and use AI with a narrow view of its benefits and challenges. Sometimes, the short-term benefits threatens people, system, and the society in the future. We must take a holistic approach while developing these works to ensure we harvest the benefits without driving society down a winding road in the future. We must become the guardians of ethical AI use in our organizations. And you may ask now, what should be our immediate action? In your next team meeting, you start a conversation about ethical AI use and develop a checklist of ethical considerations for your current or upcoming project. Put this as a high priority as any other aspect of your project.

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