Paper Number
1186
Abstract
Alongside the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), calls for responsible conduct have increasingly been put forward, particularly addressing the private sector as the primary owner of AI technologies. This demand for ethical conduct has given rise to the relatively new field of AI ethics, about which little is known in theory, and even less is known in practice. Recent studies on AI ethics have focused on organizations’ recent trend of issuing AI ethics guidelines; yet, in the corporate context, whether this principled approach actually contributes to ethical employee behavior, has been debated. Therefore, this study intends to identify measures and mechanisms which corporations operating across different industry sectors in Germany use to encourage employees in the implementation of ethical AI practices. Based on nine semi-structured expert interviews, besides AI ethics guidelines, we identify four more categories of applied implementation measures, namely, employee involvement, organizational anchoring, practical support, and hedging processes. Our study provides important insight into the under-researched field of applied AI ethics. Its findings provide a framework of implementation measures for corporate AI ethics, which is a significant starting point for both future research and companies that intend to encourage applied AI ethics among their employees.
Recommended Citation
Mayer, Anne-Sophie; Haimerl, Alexandra; Strich, Franz; and Fiedler, Marina, "How corporations encourage the implementation of AI ethics" (2021). ECIS 2021 Research Papers. 27.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2021_rp/27
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