AI Integration and a moral dilemma

Hi Hannah,

Thanks for the post. Integrating AI into a business certainly does raise a lot of practical questions.

CIPD does have a number of resources that you can view via the CIPD website page: AI in the workplace: https://www.cipd.org/.../artificial-intelligence-workplace/

Brill, thanks Mark

Hannah

I can understand your concerns but I'm not sure there's much you can do.

I am going to be involved in a meeting to discuss how AI can be integrated and in all honesty, i have so much bias and moral objection to it. 

Whilst i fully recognise that AI integration can be a game changer in some situations, just because we can, doesn't mean we should ? 

It feels a bit like we are going to do it because every one else is doing it, whereas, for me, the smart thing to do, would be to identify our gaps and see where AI could help solve a genuine business requirement. 

Perhaps that is  something you need to raise at the meeting?  What are the objectives for doing this?

I have heard and read a lot about AI lately, as have we all, i have many concerns, to name a few:

- Sustainability, the water in pulls alone is totally unsustainable

- The land required to build these hideous data centres

But we have huge unsustainable growth of roads, industrial complexes, solar farms, roads, warehousing,  housing developments, the extraction of metals for use in modern technology such as our mobile phones, batteries, circuit boards, 'smart, TVs',  computers causes a huge amount of environmental damage (Mostly in 3rd world countries of course !!). Houses built on flood plains, Coal mines closed down and miners put out of work  so we import coal from elsewhere, We travel the world by plane, car and sea, all big polluters.  We can't (or won't ) be putting the genie back in the bottle soon.

- The security ! AI growing arms and legs all by itself and the worrying thing is there is no human written code to AI programmes, so when things go wrong, no one can 'patch it', you are fully reliant on the AI agents repairing what is damaged 

- The lack of control - we don't fully understand how these systems build themselves, where is the transparency and data ownership ?

- The impact it will have on peoples jobs 

As for jobs, I think that argument comes up all the time.   

The introduction of the tractor pushed down the need for ploughmen, but increased the amount of food we produce and reduced the price and availability;  Vehicles allowed us to move goods around and created jobs in engineering, distribution and so on.  The replacement of sailing ships with motorised vessels put a lot of seaman out of work, but increased the availability of things you and I buy - almost all our electronic goods come from China.  The village and town I live in was once was a thriving port, ships and shipping the biggest employer.   There are no ships any longer and no ship related jobs.  The grave yards are full of 'Master Mariners', my own family included.  Tourism has largely replaced those jobs and the last sailmaker is long dead and no more wooden ships are built here, the last shipwrights have been replaced by welders.. 

I'm sorry if this sounds a bit of lecture but I do have  some empathy & agreement with your concerns but technology, isn't something we can totally stop, given that we humans seem to continually buy into it without much thought of the consequences.     (Later this year I'll be travelling on a train which has no driver or crew - the irony).

Hi Hannah,

This sounds like a topic you feel strongly about, perhaps to the extent it could be considered a "philosophical belief". Are you able to share your concerns? I think if I was in your shoes, rather than trying to radically change your mindset, I'd acknowledge your potential bias and concerns at the outset. Perhaps focus on the risks if your CEO would respond well to that?

Wishing you all the best with it.

You are absolutely right: it is worth implementing technologies only for specific business problems, and not because of the general hype. If the goal is to optimise processes without ethical and security risks, it is better to pay attention to proven solutions such as thе SEO Reseller Program. At the meeting, offer to first conduct an audit of real gaps in the company, and only then select the tools. For reasoning, I recommend reading the Harvard Business Review or listening to the Hard Fork podcast.

I think David Perry has given you an excellent response here. While you have some legitimate concerns here, there is nothing that you, individually, can do to stop the march of AI or technological progress.

You could choose to opt out of using it. But that's quite a challenging thing to do because everything you consume is likely to use AI in some way. Even if you don't directly use it (e.g. never use ChatGPT/CoPilot, refuse to engage with customer service bots etc), the things you consume will have used AI at some point in the manufacture process, the services you use will undoubtedly use it somewhere in their business.

Or you could choose to be part of the controls put on it. You've asked some great questions, like what problem is your business trying to solve and what purpose will AI serve. Having someone in the room who will ask the right questions about security and responsible use will be invaluable.

Gemma raises the point of this being a philosophical belief. While it is clear that you do feel strongly about this, to demonstrate a philosophical belief I think you will need to be able to demonstrate extensive knowledge on the harm of AI and the steps you take in your every day life to avoid using it. If you possess a smart phone, use social media, or engage with most customer service platforms, I think it would be very difficult to argue that avoiding AI is a manifestation of your philosophical belief.

I often find that "AI" is a catch all term used to refer to a whole lot of ways of using technology. The big, scary, "escaping the safe environment" AI is beyond what the vast majority of us will use AI for and is very likely not what is being suggested in your organisation.

Hi All,

Thank you for your perspective, advice and information, some good food for thought.

I think my concerns around AI are more than the immediate impact it has. The bigger longer term picture is quite daunting. 

I understand AI is now woven into every aspect of technology and despite me taking steps to avoid certain things, i will inadvertently be benefitting from it in some way. 

Reality is, I cant say i don't want to be involved in this project, it would hinder my position within the Business and how i am seen within my role. 

My plan is that if we are going to adopt it, it is for a genuine reason and we do so as safely and responsibly as we can. 

I am going to emphasise the fact that we like other business', have an ethical obligation to use AI responsibly and take care to plan how we use it and implement it (as much as i can). I suppose it is better to be able to influence it than have no control at all ... maybe, I'm still trying to sell it to myself in all honesty haha. 

My biggest challenge will be trying to feign interest and motivation for it. 

Thanks all 

Just a side note, if you are interested, there is a great short doc on Netflix called 'AI gone wild' super interesting stuff.

This is very late notice, but it is the Data Protection Practitioners Conference today (all held online). You can sign up here share this link with a colleague or contact

They have some AI sessions including an introductory talk on responsible AI use, an update on automated decision-making rules and introduction to agentic AI. Thought of you!

It starts in literally 2mins, but I'm sure you can drop in throughout the day and they do record most sessions too

Oh fab, thank you ! Ill see if i can drop into it a little later today or see if i can get hold of a recording.

Thanks ! 

Hannah, I hear you and have just been to an AI sensemaking day, which was excellent, talking through some of these challenges and dilemmas. 

I'm very much into tech and I come to AI the same way I come to any tech solution - curiosity, pragmatism and a heavy does of scepticism. Tech is only ever one part of the puzzle and poorly thought through deployment is likely to cause issues, only with AI it's issues at speed. 

AI is really a change project so approach it as such. It needs to be looked at with a strategic, intentional, systemic and effectiveness lens that's bespoke to your business and business need. You can look at the bodies exploring this from an ethical AI usage standpoint. That will be helpful. It's also useful to look at testing small user cases and learning where it is best used. 

You also need to think about the tools used and the cost. If you roll out licenses for enterprise wide products to all you have to consider, safety, governance, cost (that's a sustainability issue for the business), impact, ROI and dependency. If everyone starts using Co-pilot developer license you could burn through a lot of AI tokens very quickly. 

Tech very rarely is the only solution but folks do love the latest bright shiny thing and for the last three plus years that's been AI products even though it's been around for many more years than that. Good luck.