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Why the new ethics of AI are the CEO’s responsibility

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The risks of AI—such as privacy violations, bias, and fraud—are well known, but generative models add new challenges. For example, the technology could be misused to produce deepfakes (fake images or videos that may present people or individuals in a negative light) or spread misleading or harmful information. It has always been the CEO’s job to ensure responsible deployment of AI systems, but now it’s even more important for the chief executive to take on this task personally. High-level corporate value statements won’t suffice “in a world where ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ can be ambiguous and the line between innovative and offensive is thin,” caution McKinsey’s Roger Burkhardt, Nicholas Hohn, and Chris Wigley. Rather, CEOs need to set clear-cut standards for their organizations by “using examples that show how each value translates into the real-world choices that analytics teams make.”

51%

That’s McKinsey senior partner Lareina Yee and colleagues on the game-changing potential of new technologies that create original content by learning from existing data. Generative-AI systems have achieved public popularity because of their ability to write convincing text and produce artwork, but, increasingly, their business uses are also catching on: early adopters are deploying them to create, among other things, product user guides, IT code and documentation, legal document drafts, and business presentations. Eventually, AI will become “boring,” predicts an Economist article, as the technology is “applied to ever more jobs and company functions.” But right now, generative AI is not a ready-set-go technology, the McKinsey experts warn: “Its nascency requires executives to proceed with an abundance of caution.”

Generative AI may be stealing the headlines, but mainstream AI has yet to make inroads into strategy—and that’s where leaders need it the most, suggests McKinsey senior partner Yuval Atsmon in this episode of our Inside the Strategy Room podcast. “Only 7 percent of respondents to our survey about the use of AI say they use it in strategy or even financial planning,” he says. “In areas like marketing, supply chain, and service operations, it’s 25 or 30 percent.” That may be because executives expect too much from AI capabilities at this stage; out of six possible levels of AI development, only three are currently available. “Where AI can be affordably used in strategy today is for building blocks of the strategy,” says Atsmon. For example, one company uses AI to scan for certain consumer technology usage patterns that could give the business a strategic edge. “It can be a sharp knife that cuts through some of the clutter,” he says.

Lead by managing AI responsibly.

— Edited by Rama Ramaswami, senior editor, New York

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by "McKinsey Leading Off" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 02:48 - 20 Feb 2023