Recommendations for CEOs

Mindset

Create an inclusion mindset at your company. Instead of thinking about diversity and inclusion as a distinct function or part of your company, integrate it into your culture so that it’s a part of the way your company works and the products or services you produce.

Instead of having ethics or fairness relegated to one team or department, encourage everyone working for your business to take responsibility for fairness. Research shows that, increasingly, instilling this kind of culture will help build strong relationships with employees and customers.

Today

Consider developing operating principles to address bias. Many tech leaders report that they don’t take action to address implicit bias that is likely to be transferred to code because they worry that taking any action on bias will be criticized. One option to get started is to create operating principles on race and bias that outline how everyone in the company will make decisions about reducing bias and provide common language to use. One example is Code2040’s Principles on Race.

Think about involving professional societies for engineering, computer science, and other related fields in developing an ethics code for your company. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is starting to work on AI ethics and may want to help.

Longer-term

Be transparent about the goal of making AI and products that use AI as ethical as possible. Don’t keep it to yourself. Let your customers, suppliers and partners know that your goal is reduce the bias in your AI. Technology trends indicate that creating ethical AI may become a strong selling point in the future.