Is There Such a Thing as AI Ethics? – Part 2

Tom Stoneman:

Hi, I’m Tom Stoneman, and this is The Intelligent Enterprise, where every two weeks we take a break from the chaos of enterprise life and get inside a big idea by getting outside of it. Each episode, we meet an industry expert who helps cut through the noise from all the updates and rollouts while exploring one of their favorite break time activities. It might be over a kayaking session, a long run, or simply a cup of coffee, something that gives them some head space when they’re deep in a problem.

Today, we’re back with Ugo Orsi, chief customer officer at Digitate, and someone who has spent 30 years implementing new technology inside large enterprises. Ugo is joining us for this two-part series to explore the ethical considerations of AI adoption at scale. In the last episode, we talked about what ethics actually means in a business context, the risks every AI leader should have front of mind, and what Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica humanitas has to say about all of it. Today, we get into the work, what it actually looks like to deploy AI without losing sight of your people, and whether executives should be hitting pause on any of this.

Ugo Orsi:

Command and control is gone. The challenge of AI adoption is not on the technology, it is to have leaders that are willing to be challenged by the team.

Tom Stoneman:

Let’s get inside the future of enterprises by stepping outside of them. It’s funny, when we look at the way enterprises are set up, or companies in general, most companies really keep their information, it’s proprietary, right? That’s part of how you build a company, you have patents, things like this. But in the humanitas, Pope Leo says that technology really must not be in the hands of the few. How do you think organizations can change to move to that kind of a model rather than hoarding everything for themselves?

Ugo Orsi:

So it’s interesting because when we think about AI, name of a few, you count three, four, five major companies that right now, especially in the Western world, on the edge on AI. When you talk about companies and you just take Fortune 200, 500, so we go by thousands. These are the important things to say because even in the context of AI and AI application, I believe that what Pope Leo was alluding was the fact that these few company with the potential capabilities of AI, they have a strong possibility to control and manipulate the world and might go in the wrong way if they don’t think about the humanity at the center. That is the vision, I think, or the warning that Pope Leo is giving.

Now, if we go into a day-to-day world, it’s what I do implementing AI, first of all, there is a much bigger collection of individual and that’s already diffuse the risk of power within the [inaudible 00:03:28]. And then, as I said before, majority, if not the totality of the Western company have very, very solid company culture and very solid people culture, people tribal culture. So this is what I think is the power, meaning this company and these people are the people that need to adopt and use AI.

For sure, we are in a capitalistic environment, so AI need to provide a return, but in order to provide a return need to be adopted and used by the same people that are motivated and ruled by good principle. So you go back a little bit what we were saying before. If you’re going to implement AI, you’re well aware of the risk and you do a good job to implement it according to the company principle. I think you can keep still the humanity at the center and progress.

Tom Stoneman:

So do you see a way for companies, then, to align their values so they can connect ethical AI into their mission?

Ugo Orsi:

Yes. Let me give you a couple of examples. I cannot quote the companies, but I’ll give you two example. One practical example is companies automating its end-to-end support and automating and support spring up 50% of their production support team. And just to be clear, this is a company I know very, very well and I’m deeply involved. And what they did, instead of laying off these people, and also because the company culture is pretty strong and is very people oriented, made an investment, they retrained these people.

Retraining these people, they created a deeper set of expert that can fit better how to serve the ultimate customer, and they are providing a much better experience on the product itself because the overall service, it is improved. Of course, the company had the choice. I cut 50%, I go for the profit, I cut the cost and I claim a short term win. Powered by good principle of thinking about the people pushed everybody to think, well, do we need to really let them go? How can we reuse and increase the overall company value? And this is what happened.

Another example, a few years ago, a big US retailer I was working with, they had a huge problem stabilizing SAP. We implemented the automation and the team was overwhelmed to a point they had the problem of staff retention. HR intervened and what we saw was that thanks to automation, the day-to-day work was getting reduced in the sense that they were not as busy as before. Company made strategic thing. Instead of replacing the people, they put the same people to solve the root cause of why these tickets was generating that the machine was fixing, and they were able to further stabilize the environment. These are two simple example, but sometimes when we apply a technology, we need to break it down to simpler step. While it’s very interesting to talk about holistic approaches and overall plan, the difference is made when each of us do our day-to-day job and how you apply in the day-to-day.

Tom Stoneman:

Let’s move on here just real quick, a little more on this. Context in building these models is critical. Our recent guests from Microsoft and Pinecone, they’ve stressed the importance of context. So in particular, we had a gentleman, Karthik Ravindran from Microsoft, and he puts a lot of energy into thinking about how context comes into play when you’re building these language models, what you put in there, the thought that’s behind it, and then being able to adjust based on the outputs. I know you feel that current corporations have ethics, and they do. How can we be sure to include them in the proper context, including ensuring representation from varied demographics and backgrounds?

Ugo Orsi:

So in practical terms, let’s think about it when you are deploying an AI solution, it’s no different than deploying any IT solution. So the four levers that you have is people, process, technology and budget. You have to make sure that when you are deploying AI, the people part of a project doesn’t get forgotten and you just focus on timeline and budget.

My experience is the following. Technology, usually it is the smallest of a problem if you do it right. When you deploy a product, especially for AI adoption, and considering that you want to make sure that you properly represent the varied demographic, as you said, or backgrounds, because let’s assume you’re developing an HR solution or a solution to deliver specific action where involving people is included, just to make a practical example, you need to consider that those kind of algorithm are properly reflected in your AI model.

And then you have to put, as in any technology, a mechanism of return and control to make sure that the output is what you expect. This goes back to what we were saying before. Don’t get lazy because you have AI. AI is a technology. Actually, you need to do even deeper thinking due to the power that this technology has. So if you structure your project properly, I think, you can avoid the risk that you are alluding to.

Tom Stoneman:

At this point in our interview, Ugo and I had covered a lot of ground, consciousness, morality, the future of humanity. It felt like a good time to step outside of all of that. I asked Ugo what he does when he needs to clear his head.

Ugo Orsi:

If I have something that must be solved immediately, but I realize that I need a break, I usually take few minutes, 10, 15 minutes off for briefing exercise. It helps me to disconnect, to reframe, and then I start the problem again. Of course, for my day-to-day, I really like to exercise. That’s helped me to relax my mind. As you say, you have a healthy mind and healthy body. [foreign language 00:10:16]. And I really like when I have time for holidays to spend time outdoors. I enjoy mountains and also being on the water. This is how I disconnect. So if you wish I do something radically different, what it is IT or AI in general.

Tom Stoneman:

Did you say underwater?

Ugo Orsi:

Over water.

Tom Stoneman:

Over water. Okay.

Ugo Orsi:

If I’m underwater, I got a problem because the sailboat sunk. So that’s something I don’t like to experience. I’m curious, but not that far.

Tom Stoneman:

Because I wanted to know more about that. Okay.

Ugo Orsi:

Yeah. I mean, in my young age, I do it no more. I used to do underwater spare fishing, but now I lost a little bit the training.

Tom Stoneman:

Okay.

Ugo Orsi:

Canada is a little too cold to do that. So my daily routine, I’d say, depends weather condition, or taking a run outside. I really like it because I always think about that I start heavy and I arrive light. What I mean it is when I start running, I’m not a super athlete and age is not helping, I start with my heads full of thoughts. Then to do my 10K run, when I come back just to get it completed, I’m just thinking about the steps and I feel much, much lighter. It’s a way for me to refresh my brain. I would say after that, it’s helped me a lot, then, to reframe, discuss and see a different angle of the problems.

Tom Stoneman:

So if we go back to the very beginning when we were talking here and I was expressing my fears, things are moving faster and faster. Do you think executives or boards or just companies in general should consider pausing AI deployments or at least parts of AI deployments within their organizations?

Ugo Orsi:

With the answer related to what I’m doing in the context of business company that are using AI to optimize overall their organization, my short answer, no, they should not stop. AI is a new technology and we need, and I’m talking about executive and board, they need to use the critical thinking powered by the valuating that they created for their own company to decide how to apply. Executive and board need to take a more active role to decide how to implement AI within the corporation because let’s step back. What is the role of an executive or a board? Is to guide the company to achieve a specific goal. And usually the success is measuring profit. Are you with me so far?

Tom Stoneman:

Yep, I agree.

Ugo Orsi:

Now there is a new technology called AI that can radically really change the way the corporation is working. So the executives still need to think in mind, well, I need to create a winning company that means profitable, but within the context of my ethics, the ethics that I create. When they think about that, they already set a fundamental framework of how to deploy AI and they can decide the project that they want to do.

Now, if you look about the power of AI, executive and boards need also to acknowledge that artificial intelligence will radically change how company works. Majority of, let me say the West, North American, European company, I think they are based on the structuring the task, where a lot of tasks are delegated to manager to be controlled and they adopt a command and control approach. They all Taylorism. So you partialize or you divide your job in multiple tasks, you put their necessary control. So you created what is called separation of duties. You don’t concentrate power or risk of failure in the ends of few.

Well, AI coming in, all of this is gone. Leaders will have to become coaches in the sense that they will have to increase the ability of their team to generate value more than to execute task. Goes back a little bit of example that I told you before, the company that had 50% of their people instead of optimizing, and optimizing means, I mean restructuring, they retrain all of them and they use them in critical project or session in order to improve the service to the customer. So the leader of those organization transform themself from command and control, just close certain amount of ticket to how we sit together and we use AI to improve the experience to the customer?

The role of the board is not to stop. The role of the board, to me, or the executives, it is to look into how AI can transform the company without destroying the nature of the value of the company itself and especially understanding that their leadership has to radically change. Command and control is gone.

Tom Stoneman:

So in Ugo’s view, the days of the traditional enterprise leadership model are numbered. It’s a big claim and it inspires a more personal question to Ugo. For someone who thinks as carefully as he does about where AI belongs, where doesn’t it belong?

Ugo Orsi:

So it’s a good question and I’m going back to what we were discussing before. I have a clear distinction among machine and human being. A human being is not a machine because it’s got a soul and feeling. So I don’t like AI to interfere with my human relationship because humanity, by nature, is social and our ability to stay connected and support each other, it’s one of the part of who I make as human. Yes, I admit and I use it. Technology can help on the connection.

Little spoilers, I use WhatsApp with my parents. So I’m an immigrant, I live in Italy, I live in Canada and technology is very, very good. You can have video call anytime, whatever you want, but I’ll never ask AI to send a message to my parents or my friends. Value relationship, I really value. The other thing is I use a lot AI for research, but I will never give up the critical thinking. I think therefore I am, maybe because it’s go back to how I grow up, is quite a definition of a human being. When human will give up the critical thinking, that is, are you going to use a strong term, is the end.

Tom Stoneman:

So last question here on that. Is there anything you can think of that AI will be able to do that has never been done before?

Ugo Orsi:

A lot of things in many, many fields. Think about AI combined with our technology that can extend lifespan to something that we cannot even imagine. What if an old man or an old woman is 200 years old? That’s a future that AI can create. Of course, can also imagine all the [inaudible 00:18:02] AI as more controlling, creating a humanity more stupid, elimination of critical thinking. If you think about that, think about a humanity that is always connected to their devices, constantly scrolling images of cats. My bottom line is a little bit of what we’ve been talking for all these podcasts. AI is a technology and I firmly believe it’s got the potential to improve overall humanity, but it’s up to us to decide how to use it and based on how we decide which path to take.

Tom Stoneman:

Great answer. Ugo came on this show from deep in the enterprise world, but the conversation we ended up having was about consciousness, the existence of the soul, and what it means to be a human in a world that is rapidly automating. Not many guests go there and fewer still manage to bring it back to a practical recommendation for a board of directors.

That’s what makes Ugo’s perspective so rare. The philosophical and the operational aren’t intention for him. They’re the same conversation. And if Ugo is right, that the age of command and control is over, then it’s a conversation all of us need to start having. Thank you for listening to The Intelligent Enterprise, a podcast where we get inside big ideas by getting outside of them. I’ve been your host, Tom Stoneman. Please remember to follow the podcast and leave a comment or review wherever you get your shows. See you next time.