Getting Started
What to expect from the EI Network newsletter
Hello Human, we are so excited to have you here.
Since this is the first official newsletter of the EI Network (yay!) we wanted to give you a proper introduction to what you can look forward to reading here.
If you are on the Basic Membership to the EI Network, you will find us popping into your inbox once at the end of every month with event updates, the top learning takeaway, and a summary of community discussions for the month.
If you are on the Premium Membership to the EI Network, then lucky you will be receiving two additional posts a month investigating the impact of AI and tech on the ever-developing business landscape.
Curious to dive deeper into the insights we will be covering? Keep scrolling for a breakdown of this newsletter’s contributors, focus points, and teasers for what you can look forward to reading!
The purpose of this newsletter is to equip you, the human behind the AI, with the knowledge and skillset needed to become a true leader in the future of AI. To do so, we will be covering four main topics designed to bring you a balance of curated insights into best practices in Responsible AI & Ethics and the action points needed to bring that knowledge into practice.
To start, let’s introduce you to our authors and their topics…
Curated News in Responsible AI with Helena Ward
Helena Ward, a philosopher completing her PhD with the Ethics in AI Institute at Oxford, will help you cut through the myriad of AI-generated headlines to bring you the information and facts that matter.
Leadership in AI with Anna Steinkamp
Anna Steinkamp, our resident Organizational Psychologist, will be discussing the impact of AI on the modern workplace, investigating how leaders can take ownership of the inevitable changes in their organizational cultures.
Ethics by Design with Olivia Gambelin
Olivia Gambelin, a world-renowned AI Ethicist and author of Responsible AI, will wrap things up with clear actionable steps on how to apply Responsible AI practices for strategic impact on your AI development and best practices for bringing ethical values to life in your work.
Now that you know the humans behind the scenes of the EI Network, let’s take a deeper dive into the subjects they will be covering…
Curated News in Responsible AI
The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence has brought with it an abundance of resources dedicated to the ethics of AI. There are lots of people, in different ways, writing about the ethics of AI: from recent applications and developments in ethics, to ethics washing and discriminatory algorithms - the good the bad and the ugly.
It is encouraging to see both individuals and corporations recognizing the need for AI ethics, and many of these resources will be central to the discussion and progression of ethics. However, for the practitioners seeking guidance on ethics implementation, this maze of resources can serve to confuse rather than help. Filtering through the abundance of resources is an arduous and time-consuming process, and the speed of change leaves us playing continual catch-up. Keeping in the loop is frankly daunting. This is where Curated News in Responsible AI steps in.
We’re here to keep you informed while filtering out the noise: alerting you of the latest frameworks, research, news, and ethics in AI courses. By bringing you biweekly insights into Responsible AI, we’ll be breaking things down into what you need to know, how you can speak knowledgeably about the latest developments, as well practical insights into how developments are going to affect your work.
Governance and Policy
Artificial intelligence is evolving at an exponential rate. Just in the past few months, we’ve seen the rise of virtual influencers, dozens of cases concerning ownership rights of works used to train generative AI applications, and numerous national AI strategies being developed across the globe. One thing is certain - we are in an age of uncertainty, especially when it comes to regulating AI.
With different countries enacting their own laws, and public figures lobbying for different approaches to protect society, elevate the economy, and foster innovation, the race is on and the winner’s yet to be decided.
So what does this mean for businesses and individuals wanting to develop their own AI products? It is no secret that to get far in business, you need to play the game right, but how do you do that when the rules aren’t so clear-cut? Cue in our newsletter’s AI Governance & Policy section, where we’ll update you on regulations, policies, and judgments. We’ll help you navigate the regulatory landscape and provide you with talking points to take to your legal support.
Leadership in AI
In this section of our newsletter, we dive headfirst into the topic of organizational culture in the era of Artificial Intelligence. As new technologies and advances of AI cascade through markets and show up in the products we use we will experience profound changes in how we work together. Especially for leaders it´s crucial to guide their teams through change. It's a brave new world, and our organizational cultures must evolve accordingly.
AI is so omnipresent, it can be off-putting even finding a language for what we want to talk about. Mentioning grand constructs such as Organisational Culture isn´t of much help because it's too abstract. At this point it might very well be worth going back to the foundations: The values of our respective cultures. Values are the shared beliefs that guide how people in a company behave and make decisions. Trust for instance is a popular core value that may manifest in transparent communication, reliable collaboration, and a focus on fostering strong relationships among team members. Put differently, a value becomes a guiding principle of how people work together to achieve the overall mission.
Substitute this example with your own core values, how would that look like?
But I don´t want to get ahead of myself. This is just an example of how we can break down the immense task of talking about how AI shapes our cultures into smaller pieces.
In the coming weeks, we will dive deeper into the topic. This weekly newsletter column will take you on a journey, prompting you to think about the hard and fun stuff. So, what can leaders do to steer their ships through this digital storm? You may have guessed - it begins with more questions.
How do you think about AI in relation to your own organizational values?
How does AI align with your organisational purpose, vision and strategy? What are your organisational values that show up in the behavior of your employees? Values are the beliefs your company stands for - what are yours and when is the last time that you have updated them for example against the backdrop of your strategy, purpose, and overall vision?
The way you lead is one of the biggest levers to bring about change. In what ways can your leadership style evolve to embrace the potential as well as the challenges of AI?
At times the impact of AI and tech can be very subtle for example through incremental changes in how we communicate at work and get a task done (are you using chatGPT? Does your boss know? Your colleagues? If they would, do you feel easy declaring this fact?) In what ways does the impact of AI and tech show up in your daily processes such as communicating, meeting, decision making etc. You are not sure? This only means we have to dig deeper, become aware and speak with clarity about the way AI shapes how we work. Stay awake.
Ethics by Design
Typically when people hear the term ‘AI Ethics’ their minds immediately jump to mitigating risks, regulation readiness and ensuring compliance. This is an incredibly important part of embedding ethics into AI, but it’s only one side of the story.
When there are so many things that can go wrong with AI, it can be easy to get caught up in preventing the worst-case scenarios. By utilizing ethics as a tool for risk mitigation, we are able to take stock of potential pitfalls and safeguard against red flags. This positions our human-values as something in need of protection, turning things like privacy, fairness and transparency into tactical technical problems to solve. However, our values do not exist solely in this one-sided dimension, instead values can also be viewed as starting points for innovative design in AI. What do I mean by this? Simply put, when you position ethical values as key objectives in the design of your AI system and product features, you are trading red flags for green by carving out true unique selling points and gaining the competitive edge in an ever-evolving market.
This side of the AI Ethics story is called Ethics-by-Design and is focused on embedding ethical values into the very design of AI systems in order to create solutions and products that are truly aligned with our ways of life. It is our goal to share with you the keys to unlocking ethics as a tool for innovation and open your mind to the opportunities of utilizing ethics-by-design for your own work.
At Ethical Intelligence we love to collaborate, so if you have any requests for this newsletter, email helena@ethicalintelligence.co.
