Risks: From Privacy and Manipulation to Bias and Displacement

This chapter leverages findings from both our semi-structured interviews and original survey to discuss the types of risks central to how data ethics managers and their advisors think about advanced analytics and AI. Both survey respondents and interview participants highlighted a broad range of concerns raised by their use of advanced analytics ranging from invasion of privacy and manipulation to bias against protected classes and concerns about power imbalances. While the risks were wide ranging, some risks received more attention than others. Respondents were far more focused on privacy, bias, errors and problems of opacity than on concerns of manipulation or the negative effects technology can have on displacing labor. Understanding the variation in the types of concerns and the unevenness in attention to different risks is critical as such variation likely lends itself to differences in the types of processes and structures organizations develop to manage those risks.