The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence On Business: Ethical Considerations And Workplace Applications

Artificial Intelligence Better Businesses

What is Artificial Intelligence

Discuss About The Artificial Intelligence Is Making Better Businesses.

Some of the key topics we learnt over the semester in this course include economic primer and basic principles, horizontal boundaries of the firm, integration and its alternatives, the power of principles, market analysis, competitive analysis, entry and exit strategies, the dynamics of competing across time, industrial analysis, strategic positioning for competitive advantage, and information and value creation. Additionally, the book used for the course explained the concept of sustaining competitive advantage, measurement of business performance and incentives, strategy and structure, and even environment, power and culture. Therefore, the course was particularly important in educating us on the most important concepts in business. However, this paper shall focus on the aspect of artificial intelligence in the workplace and the main ethical issues surrounding it. By and large, this concept is relevant and important because Artificial intelligence has become part and parcel of the modern business world. Companies all over the world are incorporating artificial intelligence into their operations, and it is therefore important to consider its application as regards the workplace, ethics, decision making as well as its contribution to the growth of the firm.

Artificial intelligence refers to the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines such as computer systems. These machines are often programmed to think like humans and mimic the way people act (Tegmark, n.d.). By and large, the ideal characteristic of artificial intelligence is its ability to rationalize and take actions that have the best chance of achieving a specific goal. Over the past few years, artificial intelligence has become a critical component in the work place. Mainly, one can attribute this to the fact that technological advances have become a major component of the modern business world (Mar, 2018). Today, AI is on the verge of penetrating every major industry from healthcare, to transportation, advertising, education, finance and legal. The simulation technique is changing both the competitive landscape and customer expectations to create a culture shift at top organizations. As a result, this form of digital transformation improves the way work is done within organization. Big organizations are experiencing a culture shift. It also changing the competitive landscape and shifting the expectations of stakeholders       and clients that are changing virtually all aspects of how organizations operate.

Today, there are three forms of artificial intelligence levels. The first one is the  assisted intelligence which refers to the automation of basic tasks. The second type is the augmented intelligence. Primarily, this is an AI that learns from human input. As a result, it can make accurate decisions based on the AI information that has been fed into the system. The last form of AI is known as autonomous intelligence. This as an Artificial Intelligence with humans out of the loop (How Artificial Intelligence, 2017). A perfect example of autonomous intelligence is the self-thinking driving cars and autonomous robots.

Ethical Considerations of AI

Artificial intelligence is one of the most ambitious scientific and engineering adventures of all time. It is imperative to note that the possibility of creating thinking machines creates a host of controversies and ethical concerns from the society. These concerns relate to both ensuring that such machines do not harm humans and other morally relevant beings, and the moral status of the machines themselves (Burton, Goldsmith, Koenig, Kuipers, Mattei,  Walsh, 2017).  Recent dramatic progress in the technology has seen the invention of programs that are able to achieve human acts such as self-driving cars being able to drive themselves on highways, and city streets with an excellent safety record. As a result, these advances have prompted public reaction and questions on the possible threats that these machines could pose to humans (Tegmark, n.d.). As such, the integration of artificial intelligence to human life raises a number of ethical questions. These questions include how should AIs behave in our society? What should we do is jobs are in short supply? Should AI systems be allowed to kills? Should the society worry about super-intelligence and the singularity? How should society we treat AIs? (Burton et al., 2017).

By and large, the course taught us the importance of ethics and the issues surrounding the ethical nature of Artificial intelligence. The goal of teaching this ethical theory was to better equip us with the understanding of ethical problems by exposing us to multiple modes of thinking and reasoning (Bostrom and Yudkowsky, n.d.). As a result, I am now better equipped with the virtue of considering particular problems from a range of perspectives by considering each problem in the light of different theories. Primarily, the main ethical concern that arises from the use of artificial intelligence is the privacy concern. Privacy regards to the freedom from interference and intrusion. Fundamentally, the Fourth Amendment safeguards and guarantees the right of an individual to be secure in their persons, papers, houses, and effects against any unreasonable searches and seizures. The law protects the individual against violation of their privacy and therefore should not be violated and no warrants are to be issued without probable cause. Warrants are only permissible upon probable cause supported by oath and affirmation.

Today, it is generally agreed that AI technology has given rise to various controversies pertaining to issues of invasion of privacy and moral concerns. AI applications such as Siri and Alexa have been known to record private information about people through audio, and can be used by malicious individuals to take advantage of people. As a result, this has brought about the debates as regards to whether or not people can still enjoy their privacy while using AI enabled gadgets. There has also been the aspect of super-intelligence and people are concerned that it may be one of the biggest existential threats of all times (Burton et al., 2017).

AI in the Workplace

During the semester, this course taught us the importance of Artificial Intelligence in the workplace (Sharma, 2017). At the moment, Artificial Intelligence has been used in the form of digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Facebook’s M and Zuckerberg’s Jarvis (Sharma, 2017). Today, companies like Facebook, Google and Spotify have invested in huge amounts in Artificial Intelligence Development. Additionally, other firms in different industries have also firmly entered into the system are adopting artificial intelligence in their operations.

Artificial Intelligence can play an important role in the workplace. Today, the technique can be used to eliminate bias and lead to a more meritocratic workplace. Over the past few years, various companies have adopted the program in their operations. According to a study by Pegasystems and Marketforce, Artificial Intelligence and automation impacts are much more nuanced, and the program has a positive impact on how employees work (Sharma, 2017). So far, artificial intelligence has proven very useful in the field of selection, recruitment, performance reviews, and remuneration policies. According to the study, Sixty-six percent of the respondents believe that the widespread use of AI will bring about a rise in transparent meritocracy in the workplace (Sharma, 2017). On the other hand, 35 percent believe that the program will result in a reduction in the level of office politics and bias. In their opinion, the decade long arguments about bias and privilege could be resolved by the application of machine learning within organization.

Furthermore, artificial intelligence removes and automates the ordinary and repetitive tasks in the workplace that are inherent in running a business. By and large, artificial intelligence is important in the workplace and has a powerful impact on streamlining the tasks. Furthermore, it is adaptable to various environments and can be applied within a number of departments in a company and across industries (Pedderson, 2018). It helps in asking basic questions and review qualifications, allowing HR team to focus on important aspects such as human interactions and getting to know the candidates better, and on a personal level (Pedderson, 2018). In this regard, artificial intelligence improves the productivity of Human resource managers through automation. Also, it can eliminate some of the risks that arise from human error and bias and allows workers to identify and rectify these issues faster.

The interaction between human resources and artificial in the workplace provides the promise of creating great value to modern organizations. As noted earlier, AI plays an important role in selecting, recruiting, hiring, coaching, and employee service and development. Mainly, this is done through the use of Chatbots. According to a recent survey by ServiceNow that comprised of 350 HR leaders as respondents, 92 percent agreed that the future of providing an enhanced level of employee service will include this program (Meister, 2017). In their opinion, Chatbot is the newest member of the HR team. Mainly, this is due to the fact that the program allows employees to easily retrieve answers to frequently asked questions. What is more, employees are very comfortable with accessing Chatbots to obtain information whenever they need to make clarifications on various matters at the workplace (Meister, 2017). The type of questions that employees feel comfortable asking using Chatbot range from the general ones to the factual ones. For instance, they ask questions such as how much paid time off do I have left? How do I report sexual harassment and misconduct experience at the workplace? (Meister, 2017).Therefore, the AI technology plays an important role in smoothening the HR and employees experience at the workplace.

Applications of AI in the Workplace

Personally, I have experienced the utilization of Artificial Intelligence in the modern workplace. The organization was a law firm that utilized LawGeex. Primarily, LawGeex is an existing AI review platform that analyses legal contracts. The platform is able to read a contract for the company, even it is a new document that it has never seen before. It can also compare it to a collection of similar contracts it has seen in the past for future reference. It is worth noting that LawGeex functions fully just like real lawyers. Specifically, it remembers what contracts it has seen before in the past for future references. Furthermore, the program plays the role of cloud testing for the company. Thus it is very useful in test automation. My experience with the program has shown that Artificial Intelligence can simplify the work in the workplace, especially for the routine tasks. In this case, it has helped reduce the workload for the law firm by reducing the large quantity of legal documents that the employees of the firm are expected to read and inspect. Therefore, by reading through the contracts on behalf the lawyers at the firm, the workload is significantly reduced. Before the program was introduced and implemented, employees of the firm were forced to read through a significantly large number of documents, sometimes repetitively. The large workload and the repetitive nature of the task would substantially reduce the morale of most workers. However, today, the process has been simplified, thereby boosting the motivation of the employees at the organization. A boost in the morale of the employees at the organization has translated to an increase in worker productivity (Daniel, 2017). Consequently, an increase in worker productivity translates to an increase in business returns and profits.

All in all, the future of artificial intelligence is one of overwhelming dominance and can be useful in decision making. As companies change to keep the pace in the modern economy, AI is developing into a critical asset for organizations by helping them gain an added advantage in today’s highly competitive marketplace. At the moment, there is no custom-made strategy that applies for all companies in implementing Artificial Intelligence within organizations. Therefore, the management of any organization should work towards developing and adopting an artificial intelligence program that works towards making the achievement of the goals and objectives of the firm by making work easier. Artificial Intelligence techniques are continuously extending and enriching decision making support. Decision making support is offered in terms of data delivery, providing forecasts, analyzing data trends, developing data consistency, quantifying uncertainties and suggesting courses of action, among others. Hence, apart from making work easier, artificial intelligence can help in enriching the decision making process.

Personal Experience with AI in the Workplace

Firstly, AI modeling and simulation programs play an important role in marketing decisions. As usual, there are many complexities to each marketing decision. Therefore, the marketing personnel must understand the needs of the customer and align the design of the product to meet the needs and desires of the clientele. It is also vital for the company to have a good grasp of the changing consumer behavior in order to make the best decision for the company, both in the long run and the short run. In this regard, AI modeling and simulation helps the company by making reliable insights about the buyer personas. In turn, these techniques can be used to predict customer behavior and modify the services and products offered by the company to suit the needs and desires of the client. Particularly, the Decision Support System, the artificial intelligence system is able to support decisions through real-time and up-to-date data gathering, forecasting and trend analysis. Additionally, the AI system enables many automated functions such as data recording, contact management and lead ranking.  AI’s buyer persona modeling can also offer predictions of a customer’s lifetime value. What is more, sales and marketing teams can work more productively through these features. In this respect, the artificial intelligence program plays a critical role in decision making process in the marketing field.

In addition, artificial intelligence plays an important role in data assessment and recommendation, which can play an important role in investment decision making. Specifically, AI can play an important role in financial management within a company. For instance, hedge fund managers are getting interestingly interested in expert systems to reduce errors in investment decision unlike most stock traders who utilize neural networks to forecast stock performance through the analysis of past data (Daniel, 2017). As a result, they have a greater advantage of getting the best possible predictions and reducing errors in their investment decisions. Thus investment managers who utilize the program get better forecast results on stock prices and help make the best decisions and help them to bid accordingly. In turn, this ensures that a superior investment decision is made, thereby guaranteeing the best results. Therefore, AI is an important tool in the decision making of investment choices.

Furthermore, artificial intelligence has proven to be a useful decision making tool in the healthcare industry. As we learnt in class, the program has undergone advancement over the past few years. As a result, healthcare researchers throughout the world have shown interest in the use of Artificial intelligence to help them save lives. For instance, a simulation model created by researchers at the Indiana University can analyze patient’s historical data and recommend treatment plans. Notably, these predictions and recommendations have been proven to be 50 percent effective at half the cost. In this regard, it is clear that AI has the potential to improve decision making capabilities across various industries. Additionally, it has proven that it can bring down the cost of various decision making processes, while at the same time make the best decisions. Therefore, it is imperative to note that artificial intelligence has over the years developed into critical decision making tools for various professionals.

Also, artificial intelligence paradigms are used to copy human behavior to support decision making even under uncertain conditions. As such, the program uses symbolic logic, artificial neural network, evolutionary computing, probabilistic reasoning models and Intelligent Agents (Agrawal, Gans, and Goldfard, 2017). In traditional programming methodologies, numerical calculations and explicit logic are provided to help solve problems and make informed decisions about particular matters in business. In accounting, the program has been particularly useful in providing forecasts, developing data consistency, quantifying uncertainty and suggesting the best course of action as regards to a particular matter. As a result, the Artificial Intelligence program plays a critical role in facilitating informed decision making in business.

In the same manner, the car and automotive industry has also become reliant on Artificial Intelligence over the years. As such, many automotive companies have developed several AI applications to help in marketing and sales decision making. For example, artificial intelligence has resulted to the design of smarter cars that are well equipped with multiple sensors that learn and identify patterns. Over the recent past, they have developed the driverless cars. This has been made possible through the installation of add-on safe-drive features that warn drivers of possible road collisions. It is worth noting that these automotive companies use consumer data to determine the likes and desires of their target market, and then capitalize on the findings to make the decision that best suits their potential clients (Sincavage, n.d.). This way, the manufacturer is assured of making the best decision as regards to the products they produce.  It is, however, imperative to point out the fact that Artificial Intelligence technology is not the end but only a way to enhance efficiency and effectiveness, improved innovative capabilities and better opportunities for businesses.

Moreover, artificial intelligence helps in decision making through its ability to conduct opinion mining. Primarily, opinion mining is a form of data mining that involves searching through online sites for feelings and opinions of people on the web (Sincavage, n.d.). By so doing, companies are able to know more about how their goods or services are perceived by their target audience. It is worth noting that manual mining and analysis often take many hours and requires a lot of effort on the part of the company (Artificial Intelligence, n.d.). Therefore, artificial intelligence technology has helped shorten the time and reduced the effort required to perform this important task through reliable analysis and search functions. In turn, the firm can make informed decisions based on the findings made from the opinion mining results, and improve.

Overall, this course enlightened us on the fact that collaborative decision making and knowledge exchange has also been made possible through artificial intelligence. Noteworthy, this concept has been proven useful in difficult clinical health-care decision by incorporating a social context. Specifically, in complex neonatal intensive care units, physicians, parents, nurses and other parties must collaborate to decide whether to initiate, discontinue, limit or continue intensive treatment for an infant. In such cases, the system integrates the possible outcomes of the treatment with the perceptions of the parents and the interpretation of the physicians. Therefore, the AI technology offers a means for communicating difficult information in a structured form that is still personalized and customized to facilitate informed decision making.

The course materials also introduced to us the fact that artificial intelligence has become an important contribution to the growth of organizations in the modern world. According to recent predictions, artificial intelligence has the potential to introduce new sources of growth and reinforce the role of people to drive growth in business (Lohr, 2017).  Specifically, artificial intelligence can enhance and drive growth in three different ways. Firstly, it will enhance growth through intelligent automation. Different from the conventional automation solutions, AI-powered innovation can automate complex physical tasks that need agility and adaptation and are capable of self-learning. Secondly, it will enhance growth through labour and capital augmentation (Artificial Intelligence, n.d.).   As such, these two factors can be used more effectively as AI allows employees to focus on their best qualities such as innovation, imagination and creation. Lastly, growth can be enhanced through innovation diffusion. As such, artificial intelligence has the ability to propel innovation as it diffuses through the economy (Aghion, Jones and Jones, 2017). In most instances, AI has proven to double down on growth. Mainly, this is achieved through its characteristic to act like a capital-labor hybrid and transcend the current capacity of labor and capital to enhance economic growth. Furthermore, the technology has unprecedented opportunities for value creation (Artificial Intelligence, n.d.).  

Furthermore, I discovered from the lesson during this course that artificial intelligence can contribute to growth through the automation of production processes. Over the years, the process of production has been significantly improved. Production has evolved from the industrial revolution when factories used steam, then electricity was invented to automate many production processes (Aghion, 2017). Today, relays, semi-conductors and transistors have continued with the trend and it is expected that artificial intelligence will continue with the system. Already, this has been seen in inventions such as self-driving cars, A.I radiology reports, automobiles engines and MRI machines (Desjardins, 2017). All these machines have proven to make work easier, perform tasks efficiently and provide better results from the processes. Hence, it is safe to say that artificial intelligence results in an increase in the level of productivity within a firm and in an economy, and hence can bring about intensive growth.

Conclusion

All in all, all factors taken into consideration, the course has played an important role in improving my understanding on the concept of Artificial Intelligence and its application in the modern workplace. In addition, the course introduced us to the various ethical concerns that arise from the use and implementation of artificial intelligence in the workplace. Besides that, I was able to learn about the importance of artificial intelligence and its applications in the workplace, and how the same technology can be used to drive growth in the workplace. Most importantly, the unit has played an important role in impacting knowledge about how this new technology can be used within organization to improve the overall decision making process.

Reference List

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