State of Responsible AI: Report reveals widespread lack of understanding AI ethics

FICO recently released a State of Responsible AI report, which found that despite the increased demand and use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, almost two-thirds (65%) of respondents’ companies can’t explain how specific AI model decisions or predictions are made. The study found that the lack of awareness of how AI is being used and whether it’s being used responsibly is concerning as 39% of board members and 33% of executive teams have an incomplete understanding of AI ethics.

Conducted by market intelligence firm Corinium and sponsored by FICO, the report surveyed 100 C-level analytic and data executives and conducted in-depth interviews with industry thought leaders from MIT, AI Truth, The Alan Turing Institute, World Economic Forum and FinRegLab to understand how organizations are deploying AI capabilities and whether they are ensuring AI is used ethically, transparently, securely and in their customers’ best interests.  

While compliance staff (80%) and IT and data analytics teams (70%) have the highest awareness of AI ethics and responsible AI within organizations, understanding across organizations remains patchy. As a result, there are significant challenges to build support to establish practices as the majority of respondents (73%) have struggled to get executive support for prioritizing AI ethics and responsible AI practices.

“Over the past 15 months, more and more businesses have been investing in AI tools, but have not elevated the importance of AI governance and responsible AI to the boardroom level,” says Scott Zoldi, chief analytics officer at FICO. “Organizations are increasingly leveraging AI to automate key processes that, in some cases, are making life-altering decisions for their customers and stakeholders. Senior leadership and boards must understand and enforce auditable, immutable AI model governance and product model monitoring to ensure that the decisions are accountable, fair, transparent and responsible.”

The majority of respondents (55%) agree that AI systems for data ingestion must meet basic ethical standards and that systems used for back-office operations must also be explainable. But this may partly reflect the challenges of getting staff to use new technologies, as much as wider ethical considerations. More troublesome is that almost half (43%) of respondents say they have no responsibilities beyond meeting regulatory compliance to ethically manage AI systems whose decisions may indirectly affect people’s livelihoods, i.e., audience segmentation models, facial recognition models and recommendation systems.

What can businesses do to help turn the tide? Combating AI model bias is an essential first step, but many enterprises haven’t fully operationalized this effectively as 80% of AI-focused executives are struggling to establish processes that ensure responsible AI use. Businesses recognize that things need to change, as the overwhelming majority (90%) agree that inefficient processes for model monitoring represent a barrier to AI adoption. Thankfully, almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents believe that AI ethics and responsible AI will become a core element of their organization’s strategy within two years.

To download the free report, click here.