Introduction

Business use of artificial intelligence (AI) can produce tremendous insights and benefits.But it can also invade privacy, perpetuate bias, and produce other harms that injurepeople and damage business reputation. To succeed in today’s economy, companies needto implement AI in a responsible and ethical way. The question is: How to do this? Thisbook points the way. The authors interviewed and surveyed AI ethics managers at leadingcompanies. They asked why these experts see AI ethics as important, and how they seekto achieve it. This book conveys the results of that research on a concise, accessible waythat readers should be able to apply to their own organizations. Much of the existingwriting on AI ethics focuses either on macro-level AI ethics principles, or on micro-levelproduct design and tooling. The interviews showed that companies need a thirdcomponent: data and AI ethics management. This third component consists of the managementstructures, processes, training and substantive benchmarks that companies use tooperationalize their high-level data and AI ethics principles and to guide and hold accountabletheir developers. AI ethics management is the connective tissue that makes AI ethicsprinciples real. It is the focus of this book.