Embedding workplace culture-friendly AI

The best practices for AI use in the workplace retain a ‘reflection gap’ between action planning and action to overcome ethical fading in the face of productivity demands, one ethicist said.

In a recent HR Leader podcast, Dr Matt Beard (pictured), ethicist and program director of the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship at the Cranlana Centre told HR Leader the myriad ethical dilemmas and considerations in the workplace in the current climate, whether AI is accelerating concerns that human relationships are being sidelined in the post-pandemic world, whether businesses are cognisant of such concerns, and what he sees as the biggest challenges for ethics and culture in the workplace right now.

Ethical fading

The idea that AI will make us more efficient and productive will lead other things to fade into the background, Beard said. “When there’s one really strong primary goal that we have other values and other things that are also important kind of disappear from view,” he said.

From this, Beard said that prioritising productivity while overlooking ethics breeds potential to “create something that is advancing and accelerating the wrong part of what work looks like.”

Cultural challenges

“The history of labour-saving devices has always been we’re going to clear the scut work so that you have more time to do the stuff that you want to do that only you can do,” he explained.

“What we’re seeing is organisations letting the AI do the creative… and the relationship kind of stuff,” he said and warned HR departments to consider what has been “lost in terms of the interaction.”

In addition, Beard said that organisations must have clear policies about when and how AI is used. “AI is not just a tool, it also changes the way, like any technology does, the way that we understand and interact with the world around us,” he said.

Technology as an enabler of workplace connection

As an example, Beard said that if a worker is not “in the right moment to be communicating about a particular issue”, AI systems that help check the tone of an email before it is sent can help workers learn how they might be inadvertently creating a toxic work environment.

“It protects them from that part of themselves that actually could otherwise have really negative impacts, not just on the person they’re communicating, but on that person themselves,” he said.

For Beard, HR practitioners must take the time to reflect on the ethical gap between the opportunity to act and the action itself.

“Sometimes the best gift that a leader can give is the opportunity for someone to have that space,” he concluded.