The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace

Despite its nascent nature, the ubiquity of AI applications is already transforming everyday life for the better. Whether discussing smart assistants like Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa, applications for better customer service or the ability to utilize big data insights to streamline and enhance operations, AI is quickly becoming an essential tool of modern life and business. In fact, according to statistics from Adobe, only 15 percent of enterprises are using AI as of today, but 31 percent are expected to add it over the coming 12 months, and the share of jobs requiring AI has increased by 450 percent since 2013. Leveraging clues from their environment, artificially intelligent systems are programmed by humans to solve problems, assess risks, make predictions and take actions based on input data. Cementing the "intelligent" aspect of AI, advances in technology have led to the development of machine learning to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to perform the task.