Is there an artificial intelligence (AI) CPA in our midst?!
Last year was filled with news that ChatGPT4 passed the CPA board, along with medical, law and other examinations, in the United States. Since the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022, a host of other chatbot AI’s has since emerged, either public or customized as in-house chat and analysis tools. And they have been used extensively, from school requirements to office reports, and in our daily activities.
The use of generative AI in chatbots is one of the many promises of AI. Other opportunities include its use as clinical decision support systems in medical diagnosis, labor efficiencies through automated tasks, big data algorithms that provide personalized content for users, and – just like in the movies – a system that could predict the likelihood of criminal activities, among other things.
In a report by the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute and two other organizations, they described how AI functions. As systems designed by humans, AI given a complex task and acting in the physical or digital dimension do these by perceiving their environment through data acquisition, interpreting the collected structured or unstructured data, reasoning on the knowledge, or processing the information, derived from this data and deciding the best action(s) to take to achieve the given goal.
This, however, limits the opportunities since they operate “narrowly” within a set of parameters or data fed into it. Along these lines, concerns were raised on the full and better use of AI. These range from: the potential biases embedded in parameters may exacerbate inequality, discrimination, digital divide, or exclusion; or on the need for transparency and understandability of the workings or algorithms and data they have been trained on; or the potential loss of human autonomy and control over decision-making may yield unethically questionable outcomes in multiple applications; or the issue on data governance may impede effective control on the attribution of responsibility for data-driven decisions; or, the ultimate responsibility and liability for harms resulting from the use of AI applications remain ambiguous under many legal frameworks.
Addressing these opportunities and concerns, and as companies begin to formally adopt and apply AI in their processes and organizations, the need for AI governance began to surface in management and board discussions.
What governance and ethical considerations are needed in the adoption and application of artificial intelligence?
The World Economic Forum suggested that organizations need to consider the following in managing AI: (a) its effect on governance matters on reputation, ethics, regulation, and finance, and (b) its technical impact on robustness, efficacy, privacy, bias and explainability.
UNESCO, interpreting AI broadly as systems with the ability to process data in a way which resembles intelligent behaviour, released in November 2021 its Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, which was adopted by all 193 Member States. the Recommendation sets four core values for AI systems that work for the good of humanity, individuals, societies, and the environment: (1) Respect, protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms on human dignity; (2) Living in a peaceful, just, and interconnected society; (3) Ensuring diversity and inclusiveness; and the (4) Flourishing of the environment and ecosystem. The Recommendation enumerated ten core principles to a human-rights centered approach to the ethics AI and sets forth actionable policies to achieve them.
Kate Soule, in an IBM webcast, emphasized that “when the stakes are high, we need to be able to trust. But have that trust validated and verified and not just trust for trust’s sake.” CPAs are in a unique position to set ethical guardrails. They can influence organizations and their clients in developing appropriate policies and standards on the ethical use of AI, advocate a “design by trust” approach, and validate and verify information generated by artificial intelligence.
Should AI be ethically good? Only when humans design and develop them to be so. The ball in now yours!
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Mhycke C. Gallego is currently the National Sectoral Director for Public Practice of the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and Advisory Practice Leader of Punongbayan & Araullo (P&A Grant Thornton). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Institute.