Discuss about the Comparative business ethics and social responsibility.
Google is a multinational company which is specialised in internet related products and services. The demonstration of Google Duplex has grabbed the attention of world. It is a pre-recorded and real time interaction between Google voice assistant and a person. This system allows Google assistants to call on their behalf to schedule an appointment or reservation. The voice synthesis is jaw dropping. The duplex sounds like human even sounds like mms and uhhs. The way of getting things done is making a phone call. This essay defines the ethical issues faced by Google and how service workers were forced to act like robots to meet match (The Atlantic, 2018).
The Google duplex service offered by company allows Google assistants to call establishments on the behalf of users to fix a meeting or schedule. The issue of concern here is that will the bots get equal service. What types of skills are required to develop by service workers to respond voice bots calling on behalf of clients? There is messiness in the human processes required by duplex. The computers make decisions now and the main role of humans is to just deliver information after pressing some keys on computer (Pearson, 2017). Many persons lost their job as travel booking moved to websites and the work burden is handled by the customers. The agents are bound to act like robots. The duplex is not something innovative and amazing but it is old and boring. It’s been decades that workers are forced to act like robots. It used to make service interactions unpleasant that people want to avoid them. So now Google has provided robot to act like a human. It is also seen that nobody needs small talk and what are we doing is exchange of information. An AI can do this task. The Google duplex simply extends trend for those businesses that have not used computerisation in their reservation systems. People will not go for Google duplex who hates making phone calls.
There are groups which are concerned about the consequences of Al controlled society. Google duplex can only reinforce mistrust among people. The ethical issue faced in Google is that almost everyone lost their jobs as booking is shifted onto customers. Some jobs are already replaced by machines which were held by people. Now the voice related jobs like customer service is on risk. The attempt of Google to make Duplex great have surprisingly backfired due to ethical blunder. The robots can replace trained professionals in the field of IT, medicine and law. The tasks which were performed by professionals have become lost cost utilities (Bejou, Ennew & Palmer, 2015). The effect of Al will make compulsory for the enterprises to adjust business strategy. It will impact employment in some industries. It has put a lot of people out of work. The job losses will offset by new jobs, which does not involve facing people directly. It is also the waste of time to get calls from automated bots. The company has invented ways to automate jobs. The company still depends on the hourly work when it comes to products and services. AI can drastically cut down the reliance on human workforce which means that revenue will go to fewer people only. The companies who have ownership in AL driven companies can only make money (Setó-Pamies & Papaoikonomou, 2016). The Google duplex equally affects behaviour and interaction. The bots have become better at exhibiting human conversation. The software has become effective at directing human attention and generating certain actions. If this is not used in a right manner then it can affect behaviour. AI has capable of processing but it cannot always trusted to be fair and unbiased (Kalshoven & Taylor, 2018). The AI systems are created by humans and these humans can be biased and judgemental. The system can cause damage if used spitefully. The Google duplex is good but it is solving the wrong problem. The corporate governance has been a black mark in the culture of company. It otherwise seems like outstanding. The company is lacking in CSR as it is reducing rate of employment. The grants are made by the company in charitable organisations (Kolk, 2016).
The ethics examines ethical rules and principles with in the commercial framework. It is centred on business philosophies which are rooted in the value and ethics of company. It is the mission of company to organise world’s information and makes it accessible globally. Google should consider ethical issues before launching duplex. The company is committed to compliance with law of each nation where it conducts business (Vitell, 2015). The company focused on providing services which are platform independent. Google’s search engine can be searched from any browser. The company has drafted a set of ethical principles to monitor the use of technology with the department of defence. The company has also made agreement with department of defence to develop artificial intelligence. The agreement is made to analyse and interpret drone videos. The company made ethical decision with China and following rules set by the Chinese government. It does not display messages like ‘page not available’ rather it explains to user that ‘information is not available due to the Chinese law’. The company focuses on the wonderful outcomes such as decreasing risk of consumers and improving safety of public. The focus is to minimise corporate liability (Quarshie, Salmi & Leuschner, 2016). The ethical decision taken by company to develop AI prompted employees to sign letter. The company do not have ethical guidelines in a place where it taking contract. The company subordinated privacy concerns in the engineering designs. It concerns more picosecond computing advantage then the privacy and safety of users.
Google is ranked among the most ethical companies in the world. An ethical decision making process is followed by company to ensure that the principles are followed. The decision making process followed by Google is:
Define the problem: Some analyses are undertaken by company to understand where it needs to bring in ethical principles. The company decides the need of ethical decision and outcome which is desired by the actions taken. This decision states the problem and checks the facts. If there is something which makes employees uncomfortable or they have conflict interests then it should be considered in this point (Chell, Spence, Perrini & Harris, 2016).
Consult resources and seek assistance: Google develops strategy by using resources and people around. The company clarifies from other sources while creating strategy to handle issues. Before consultation of resources facts are required to be considered and checked.
Think about lasting effects: The viable resources are found out while identifying problem. Handling of issues is filtered through the lens of how it affects others (Sternberg, 2018). For instance, if there employees face any issue in doing work on time then mangers can install policies to change the time workers report. It can have detrimental impact on workers and clients if managers are not careful.
Consideration of regulation in other industries: The establishment of rules and regulations by other companies have good initial for developing ethical strategies. The company looks at the way specific issues are handled and come in their way (Price, 2017). It is also helpful in looking at the mistakes made by other companies. Google can learn from them. The good and bad side should also be considered before taking a decision.
Decide on decision: The final decision is taken after doing consultation and extra research. A good idea is considered to create proposal about the issue and how leaders plan to work with team to solve issues. If the problems are more personal and includes some kind of harassment then an appropriate plan should be established to handle that particular situation. The decisions should be bring at large if widespread ethical issues have become a problem at workplace (Saeidi, et. al. 2015).
Implementation: In this step actions are meet. It is easy to research and find solutions for a problem. But it is challenging to deal with morality and ethics and putting into action. The company facilitates the execution of ethical decisions.
Evaluation: The application is not enough; the evaluation should be made to see how approach is working out. It also considers the unintended consequences which are not predicted by the company. The issues like things are getting better or worse are deliberated in this step. The analysis of issues figures out the response of implementation.
Conclusion
Google duplex is an artificial IA that can call and interact with people. It is also able to understand complex sentences and fast speech. The concern came in limelight is that Google is misleading on the other end of conversation. An agent thinks that he deals with other is human not machine. It is a robot that pretends to be human. People found it control less and ethically lost. It is observed that the work of duplex is much in progress. It can create jobs in future as estimated in 2020. But recently it has reduced rate of employment in the company.
References
Bejou, D., Ennew, C.T. and Palmer, A., 2015. Trust, ethics and relationship satisfaction. In Proceedings of the 1995 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 226-227). Springer, Cham.
Chell, E., Spence, L.J., Perrini, F. and Harris, J.D., 2016. Social entrepreneurship and business ethics: Does social equal ethical?. Journal of business ethics, 133(4), pp.619-625
Kalshoven, K. and Taylor, S., 2018. Leadership: Philosophical Perspectives and Qualitative Analysis of Ethics—Looking Back, Looking Forward, Looking Around. Journal of Business Ethics, 148(1), pp.1-3.
Kolk, A., 2016. The social responsibility of international business: From ethics and the environment to CSR and sustainable development. Journal of World Business, 51(1), pp.23-34.
Pearson, R., 2017. Business ethics as communication ethics: Public relations practice and the idea of dialogue. In Public relations theory (pp. 111-131). Routledge.
Price, D.H., 2017. A Short History of American Anthropological Ethics, Codes, Principles, and Responsibilities—Professional and Otherwise. In Anthropological Ethics in Context (pp. 23-38). Routledge.
Quarshie, A.M., Salmi, A. and Leuschner, R., 2016. Sustainability and corporate social responsibility in supply chains: The state of research in supply chain management and business ethics journals. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 22(2), pp.82-97.
Saeidi, S.P., Sofian, S., Saeidi, P., Saeidi, S.P. and Saaeidi, S.A., 2015. How does corporate social responsibility contribute to firm financial performance? The mediating role of competitive advantage, reputation, and customer satisfaction. Journal of Business Research, 68(2), pp.341-350.
Setó-Pamies, D. and Papaoikonomou, E., 2016. A multi-level perspective for the integration of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability (ECSRS) in management education. Journal of Business Ethics, 136(3), pp.523-538.
Sternberg, R.J., 2018. The Scientific Work We Love: A Duplex Theory of Scientific Impact and Its Application to the Top-Cited Articles in the First 30 Years of APS Journals. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), pp.260-267.
The Atlantic, 2018. Service workers forced to act like Robots meet their match. [Online]Available at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/humans-acting-like-robots-vs-robots-acting-like-humans/559955/ [Accessed on 19 May, 2018]
Vitell, S.J., 2015. A case for consumer social responsibility (CnSR): Including a selected review of consumer ethics/social responsibility research. Journal of Business Ethics, 130(4), pp.767-774.
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