It is always about ethics - even more with AI
Two Global Alliance founding members, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in the UK (CIPR) and the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) have joined forces under the auspices of the #AIinPR panel to prepare public relations professionals in understanding ethical dilemmas in deploying artificial intelligence (AI). The CPRS recently became a partner in the AIinPR panel because of the importance of this issue in the practice of public relations.
The AIinPR panel is now global with panelists from Australia, Canada and the UK and followers of its work around the world.
As corporations are becoming more digital, data-driven and agile in response to stakeholder expectations and the corona virus pandemic, more focus is being placed on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its role in organisational systems, ways of working and decision-making.
In the world of communication, sophisticated technology, from content management and campaign automation systems to collaboration platforms and data analytics are becoming more common. This has implications for the way professional communication teams are being structured, our roles and competency sets. A truly agile culture is required of us as communicators too.
The AIinPR ethics guide was written by two past chairs of the Global Alliance who have been following the deployment of AI in public relations for the past six years.
“AI continues to gain global ground as a business and communications tool, but the technology is as imperfect as its programmers – humanity. To compensate, PR professionals need to embrace their role as organizational conscience, which includes applying the ethics principles and practices offered in this ethics guide to AIinPR to their increasing use of data from technologies like AI and machine learning.”
Sarah Hanel, MBA, APR
Ethics & Standards Director
Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communications Management
Kerry Sheehan Chart.PR, AIinPR Panel Chair said: “This guide is a first in the public relations industry. The purpose of the AI in PR ethics guide is to prepare professionals to ask the vital ethics questions, which must be answered at every point, about the design, build and deployment of all AI processes, systems, services and platforms at organizations, businesses and brands. The role of PR must include ethical and reputational guardianship. This guide helps practitioners to do that”
“Artificial Intelligence is quickly becoming an essential technology for public relations and organizational decision making. Like any emerging technology, AI creates new tools and opportunities to work smarter and faster, but it also comes with its own risks and ethical dilemmas - caveat emptor. Newcomers to the world of AI will take comfort knowing there's a guide for that. The Ethics Guide to Artificial Intelligence in PR sets out to define the pitfalls of AI and offers up principles of professional practice to help you make the right call on any AI application. Credit to the AIinPR Panel for taking a complex concept - Ethics in AI - and distilling it into a very practical user manual for those of us active in PR and communications management.”
Victor Vrsnik MCM APR Fellow-CPRS
President Canadian Public Relations Society
As the authors of this guide, we believe public relations and communications professionals are trusted advisors not only on communication, but about the purpose and values of our organizations. As our organizations transform as result of AI, there is a huge opportunity for us. Ethical and reputational guardianship should be at the heart of how organizations approach and implement AI and that is our business. It is our duty to upskill in this area and learn how to apply an ethical framework to decision-making. Trust in AI is paramount if it is to be deployed. Poorly designed and executed AI solutions can and will ruin reputations.
To gain trust, we must ensure transparency and inclusiveness in design, build, testing and deployment and beware of all bias, conscious and unconscious, and mindful of diversity and privacy throughout the process.
The highest principle in the GA’s sixteen principles of ethical practice is working in the public interest. That is our North star as we navigate this new world full of AI solutions and applications. The current pandemic is giving rise to a plethora of contact tracing applications. While there is narrow AI used in such applications, the ethical dilemmas are massive. Other AI tools used to track public sentiment on the pandemic can be more intrusive and have potential to breach privacy regulations. Public relations professionals need to be involved in all stages of development of such applications and all AI builds. And to do so we must learn about AI and the ethical dilemmas.
The Ethics Guide to Artificial Intelligence in PR sets a framework for arriving at ethical decisions with a five-step process. Learning about AI, defining the PR and AI pitfalls, identifying ethical issues and PR principles, using a decision tree and deciding ethically. To help with identifying ethical challenges in AI, the data ethics canvas from the UK’s Open Data Institute has been utilised and the sixteen public relations ethical principles come from the Global Alliance’s1 code.
We have identified six macro issues currently defining the environment and which have to be considered by CCOs and all senior managers as they consider automation and AI:
Social change
Changes in the nature of work and our responsibilities
AI having the potential to redistribute power or concentrate it in the hands of those with the resources, that is us
the governance of algorithms to avoid selectivity, and discrimination and to build in transparency to their decision-making
privacy control and transparency on issues such as storage, how data is aggregated, shared and commercialised
bias which is inbuilt in automation and AI systems
Given the scale of these issues, developing responsible AI solutions is a significant challenge.
Getting ethics right, doing the right thing is hard enough in normal life. Add AI and machine learning and you have a recipe for decision-making fraught with perils. One that requires the mind, human minds, to focus on ethics at every turn of activity because every mistake we make will be amplified in the big data, algorithmic universe in which we now live.
The guide uses two examples of AI to walk you through the decision-making process. The recently released CPRS decision making tree (which is largely based on the original CIPR decision making tree) is put to good use in this guide.
A good maxim to remember in professional life and even more so with AI is that just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done that is the essence of ethical decisions, making thoughtful and thought-through choices. The essence of a well-reflected ethical decision is one that has survived scrutiny, challenge in thought, intent and execution.
The ethics guide to AIinPR is the latest guidance from the AIinPR panel. To learn about AI the panel has produced four primers and issued two major research reports: ‘Humans Still Needed’, published in 2018 looks at the impact of AI tools on the skill set of public relations. It found that currently only 12% of skills or tasks have been assisted or replaced by AI with a potential reaching 38% by 2023. The most recent report ‘The effects of AI on the professions’ was published in January 2020, supported by the Alan Turing Institute, and confirms that compared to other professions the public relations industry is sleepwalking into AI.
All of this points to a lack of awareness about AI in general and its applications to public relations in particular.
The guide has been endorsed by leading individuals representing the following organizations:
Global Alliance
Arthur W Page Society
Copenhagen Business School
Women Leading in AI
Open Data Institute
Leeds Becket University
Omnicom
We and AI
Awaken AI
For more on AIinPR visit www.cipr.co.uk/AI
Jean Valin APR FCPRS Hon. Fellow CIPR and Anne Gregory PhD FRSA Hon. Fellow CIPR