Check out last week’s posts on Compliance Culture, in case you missed or want to revisit them.
Many thanks for reading!
Artificial intelligence (AI) describes the cognitive function of machines through technology such as algorithms or other machine learning mechanisms. The very definition of AI places technological devices with this “artificial” knowledge in comparison to and opposition with humans possessing “natural” knowledge. This discipline within technology has been around for more than sixty years and in recent years, is gaining consistent enough momentum that many of its once outlandish ambitions – such as self-driving cars, for example – are current or imminent reality. As computing power advances exponentially and uses for and types of data are ever-growing, AI is becoming ubiquitous in the news of the newest and emerging technological innovations.
As AI sustains and draws on its now considerable basis of achievements to make even more advancements in research and development across many business sectors, ethical and existential dilemmas related to it become more prevalent as well. Returning to that initial dichotomy between artificial or machine intelligence and natural or human intelligence, the design ethics and morality of bestowing human-like thinking ability on devices and networks raise many philosophical questions. Certain uses of AI, such as for autonomous weapons, could even pose safety risks to humans if not developed and directed thoughtfully.
These questions can go on and on; practical ethics represents the attempt to navigate the broad social context of the workplace by reconciling professional rules with moral expectations and norms. This, again, is highly pertinent to a corporate compliance program, which seeks to encourage an business culture that respects legality, approaches business competitively yet thoughtfully, and also sets standards for employee and organizational integrity. It is imperative for compliance professionals to understand practical ethics and use dilemma sessions or open discussions with the businesses they advise in order to encourage a common comfort level with this sort of thinking throughout their organization.
The below TED/TEDx talks emphasize the connection between AI and human life, commonly invoking questions about bioethics, practical ethics, and morality.
Check back here in the future for continuing commentary on AI and its impact on human life and society, including technology and the ethics of knowledge acquisition, as well as more insights on specific AI innovations such as self-driving cars and machine learning.
Many of the contemporary challenges to the meaning of human life and the responsibility of organizations, individuals, regulators, and even governments to contend with them on a legal or regulatory level come from technology. Indeed, bioethics and design ethics are rich with ethical dilemmas caused by advancements of sophisticated technologies such as artificial intelligence and its many applications. However, there is one philosophical area that is in tension with societal existential constructs and is as old as life itself – aging and death.
The ethical dilemmas stemming from the legal and moral responsibilities humans have to themselves and each other as the end of life approaches are contentious and among the most difficult possible. These dilemmas go to the core of society’s moral ideas about the value of life, the extension of human rights throughout physical or mental incapacity due to age, and the treatment of patients and their bodies through and beyond death.
Legal guardians, funeral homes, hospitals, and other individuals and organizations working in and making profits from business related to aging and dying – encompassing legitimate activities as well as illicit ones – all have various duties to their clients and are subject to societal and legal expectations and norms. However, inspection and enforcement efforts are often uneven and struggle to keep pace with the challenges posed by abusive practices or organizational misconduct. Threats to the rights of individuals and the dignity and proper treatment – or at least clear and honest disclosures – that are expected by patients and their families, must be the focus of future regulatory scrutiny and improvement.
As demonstrated by the foregoing stories, improper practices and abuses of power, as well as technological advancements, pose risks to the nature of aging and death as it is currently defined within society. Supervisory frameworks must be developed and strengthened to protect the most vulnerable of individuals and ensure that they and their families are not treated unjustly. Risk assessments and coherent, holistic regulatory guidance should be in place to ensure that these protections are upheld.
This is the fifth and final post in a month-long series profiling acclaimed sports coaches for their ethical leadership abilities. John Wooden, famed UCLA basketball coach, and his Pyramid of Success were the subject of the first post. The second post was about Johan Cruyff, world-famous Dutch footballer and international club manager, and the ethical leadership lessons of his 14 Rules. The third profile discussed Jim Valvano and his views about leadership and success as expressed in lines from his famous 1993 ESPY Awards speech. Last week’s post focused on Vince Lombardi, the NFL Hall of Fame coach, and values for ethical leaders from his famous motivational speeches.
Finally, today’s post will be about Gregg Popovich, an NBA coach who heads up the San Antonio Spurs and is well-known for his progressive and pro-active values, which often manifest in very public and political statements.
Before becoming an NBA coach, Gregg Popovich attended the United States Air Force Academy where he played basketball and majored in Soviet Studies. He served in the Air Force for five years before returning to the Academy to coach basketball there, followed by a stint as head coach at Division III Pomona-Pitzer and then assistant coach jobs in the NBA for the San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors, before returning to take a general manager job with the Spurs in 1994.
Popovich is widely considered one of the most accomplished coaches in NBA history. He has been the coach of the San Antonio Spurs since 1996, making him the longest tenured active coach in not only the NBA but in all US major sports leagues. The competitive successes of the San Antonio Spurs under his stewardship are many – 20 consecutive winning seasons, five NBA championships, and more than 1,000 games won.
However, Popovich’s legacy as a winning basketball coach may be matched by his legacy as an outspoken and consistent leader on social justice issues – both in society as a whole and on the direct scale among his players. Popovich consistently uses his very visible platform to speak about inclusion, engagement, and accountability.
Hopefully this series of posts about sports coaches as ethical leaders has been entertaining and informative, lending a new perspective to management values in a different venue than the traditional corporate compliance environment. The concepts of inner success, character ethic, personal accountability, and purpose-driven life and work are all commonly endorsed by these ethical leaders as they guide their teams, which are major organizations in and of themselves, to competitive achievements with meaningful, sustainable motivations behind them.
As social media platforms, the internet of things, and other online networks advance in sophistication and prevalence, the line between engagement and addiction becomes ever thinner. Features which are designed to make browsing the internet or using connected devices more comfortable, intuitive, and pleasurable are also vulnerable to misuse and abuse which can have highly negative impact on people’s daily routines and lives.
Indeed, the stereotypes of people too engrossed in their phones or tablets to even notice the people around them are widespread and real. So much of social interaction has been carried over into online communities and takes place on social media or in internet comment sections and forums. The positive possibilities of this kind of access to information and collaboration are boundless. Connecting across continents and sharing all kinds of information and ideas is powerful for learning, cooperation, and creativity. Making these systems better and more efficient for users to engage with only further empowers these uses. Designers, engineers, and technologists have taken the positive responses from users and implemented that feedback in coming up with new features and improvements with the aim of making the user interface and experience better.
Whether it’s making screens balanced with vivid images that are easy on the eyes or implementing machine-learning based algorithms that fill users’ feeds with the most interesting and entertaining information tailored for them, the original aim of these innovations is to make the platform or device more interesting to use and therefore to encourage the user to spend more time on it. This has obvious commercial appeal to the companies that create these networks and devices, their advertisers, and their other partners who are all competing to attract people’s attention and gain valuable impressions or content views. Time is money, and a faithful user is a lucrative one.
However, those eyeballs content providers and marketers wish to attract are, of course, inside the heads of people and therefore the ever-ramping effort to engage those people runs into risky territory where interest or active participation edges into dependency and addiction. There are countless studies which have shown health problems stemming from overuse of phones, tablets, computers, and other devices, including eye fatigue, migraines, sleep deprivation, and other problems related to vision, concentration, or stress caused by overindulgence in looking at screens. This is not to mention the destructive social impact that over-immersion in devices can have, isolating people from their families and communities as well interrupting work, diminishing traditional communication skills, and exposing people to online abuse and other unsafe or inappropriate content that could cause harm.
In fact, some of the individuals who have had the loudest voices against the dark side of the advancements of personal technology are in fact the designers and engineers who had a hand in actually creating the most addictive features. For example, the engineer who was involved in creating the Facebook “Like” button and the designer who worked on the “pull to refresh” mechanism first used by Twitter are among a growing group of technologists who have started to question and reject the role that immersive technologies play in their lives. These individuals understand the good intentions that were behind the original creation of these technologies, with the hope to make them more useful or fun for users, but they also see the downsides. Coined “refuseniks,” these early adopters have purposefully made efforts to diminish or balance the presence of technology in their lives. As many of these addictive behaviors center around the use of smartphones and applications on them, many of these people who designed these features and now speak out against them turn off notifications, uninstall particularly time-wasting applications, and even distance themselves physically from their phones by following strict personal rules about usage or cutting off access after certain times or in specific places.
The question remains – pioneers of these features may have matured within their own careers and lives enough to realize that their earlier intentions have destructive potential they don’t want to indulge personally. But how will companies creating products and services in this space balance this as public attention begins to more commonly acknowledge the problematic nature of these features? Being a refusenik cannot be the answer for everyone, as these devices and platforms do bring great value to their users and the world as a whole, despite the negative effect they can frequently also have. Organizations working in this space can take advantage of corporate social responsibility values to balance their innovation of new features with the expectations of how consumers can use them, for good or bad.
On an individual level, it is very helpful to take personal responsibility to acknowledge and understand how these platforms and technologies are designed to make people engaged and how that can turn to addiction. Being conscious of these features or tendencies in their use is key. People should push themselves to understand why and how they use these technologies before adopting and engaging in them. If they feel prone to misuse of it, then understanding the cause of it and exposure to it will help to mitigate its effects.
For an interesting perspective on high-tech designers and technologists who have rejected the technologies they sometimes played pivotal roles in creating, check out this article from The Guardian.
A pure rules-based approach to compliance is direct and clear-cut, but by design lacks emotional or personal engagement. Following rules of all kinds – legal, community-based, household; practical, austere, illogical – is a social norm most humans are taught from their earliest memories. Despite this, many of them do not do it very well even with the best intentions, and still more never intend to attempt adherence.
To have any expectation that rules will be credible and inspire understanding and respect, there must be an authentic and compelling “why,” a purpose that people feels relates to them and calls for their commitment. Many laws are so deeply linked to societal expectations and taboos that the majority of people do not need to be persuaded to appreciate them – restrictions against pre-meditated murder, property theft, and abuse of animals for example. Those who remain unconvinced these acts should be prohibited and punished are not likely to view violating laws as something offensive or damaging either.
Sincere attempts to reach individuals who are antipathetic toward all rules, however few or rare they may actually be in society, with a rationale rooted in values are not likely to prevail. In general a values-based approach can be very powerful and evocative, but in order for it to hold personal appeal it must strike a difficult balance between universal relatability and individual accountability. All organizations should define their values and position their strategy and public branding within that set of principles, but this is delicate. If the values are too specific then they will be exclusionary rather than engaging, appealing only to a core group of true believers rather than attracting a wider audience. If the values are too broad, however, then they will be superficial and ring empty – again preventing individuals from attaching to them and being their standard bearers.
An especially effective tactic for bridging this gap is to make corporate values a living artifact which reflect the organization as it grows and changes along with business and society. In an ambitious and forward-looking organization, the profile and strategy will evolve and so should the outlook of what matters most in defining its purpose. Using a rules-based approach to provide both the floor and the roof for the terms of the corporate mission statement, values can fill the space between and invite everyone – employees, partners, stakeholders alike – inside.
There are many mechanisms through which corporate compliance programs can appeal to employees to make the connection between rules and values. Inspiring voluntary compliance, where employees feel aware of and responsible for the values of the compliance program and connect to them individually, adds weight to the mandatory compliance expected by the rules. Increasing the relatability of the requirements with principles behind them gives people incentive to sign on and go along with the compliance program. Compliance programs can aim to encourage ongoing employee adhesion to the organization’s values-based approach in the following ways, ranging from the lightest touch to the heaviest:
The above methods for encouraging voluntary compliance can be employed by compliance professionals simply and powerfully in routine compliance communications and awareness initiatives. Reminding employees of values – the purpose – helps to heighten the credibility and appeal of rules – the requirement – and provide a mission perspective to their engagement in the compliance program.
Be sure to visit Compliance Culture this week for posts on these topics.
Don’t miss it!
Check out last week’s posts on Compliance Culture, in case you missed or want to revisit them.
Many thanks for reading!
Taylor Swift is one of the most famous and successful pop music stars of the last decade. She has dominated the charts, the front pages of tabloids, and the trending posts on social media for years, as much for her songs and music videos as for her romantic exploits and friendship feuds. In an era of being famous for being famous, Swift is a special kind of celebrity who presents a public personality that takes deep advantage of this trend while still giving commercial justice to her origins as a country pop singer. In this dichotomy, Swift has both fans and detractors on both sides – those who are enthralled by the mystique of her celebrity image are just as engaged with the public brand of her persona as those who actually have any interest in her music itself at all.
With this source of her visibility on the music charts and in front of the paparazzi camera lens, it is no surprise that Swift has experienced her share of growing pains on the world stage. Swift’s eponymous album was released in 2006 when she was just 16 years old; at the time of her most recent release, Reputation, in November 2017, she was 27 years old. The generational changes any person experiences during the intervening years are transformative on all levels – personality, relationships, career, worldview.
To go through these phases and changes in front of the whole world, means that your choices and their contexts and subtexts are part of a powerful public dialog. A specific aspect of Swift’s fame has been that her fans and detractors alike are preoccupied with parsing the similarities and differences between the public face Swift presents in her music and media appearances and clues for what her private, undiscussed motivations and ambitions might be.
Swift’s public image has been negatively impacted in recent years following several high-profile feuds with other celebrities such as Katy Perry and Kim Kardashian West. Those wishing to question her motives or critique her actions have had plenty of fodder. The contradictions in her established image and her possible schemes and attention-getting frauds have fueled many a comment thread on social media. Swift’s most recent album is therefore aptly named Reputation and takes direct aim at this critical focus about her identity.
The change in Swift’s position in popular media due to the critical reception of what is, in reality, her brand strategy, presents a compelling case study in reputational risk. Even though one’s reputation is based largely on perception or even assumption and innuendo, it has a very real effect on public standing. This is true for Swift who is an individual representing her brand and work, just as it is true for an organization representing its business strategy, product or service line, and client relationships. It is especially amplified by those with a large internet presence, as the nature of online interactions in the digital age is to inspire investigation and critical judgment. As the saying goes, you can never really delete anything from the internet, and that proves true time and again – especially when statements by or images of someone like Swift can generate discussions and debates bigger than the original post ever could have been.
Therefore reputational risk presents a challenge to high-profile individuals and brands that is hard to reconcile with desires for publicity and competitive attention and impossible to control once a controversy or reaction has been ignited, innocently or otherwise. The morality of reputational identity and the necessary efforts to maintain and construct it together create an important exercise in defining and adhering to a strategic, values-based approach.
The changing fortunes and public opinion of a celebrity like Swift can be easily translated to the organizational context, where business entities rely on their public profile and engagement with consumers and stakeholders to maintain competitive edge. Corporate identity and credibility is incredibly valuable and also inestimably vulnerable to reputational risk. Negative news articles, mentions of companies pursuing legal but unpopular business strategies, involvement in politically complicated regions or activities, and other conduct that puts companies on the razor’s edge of popular opinion can have disastrous effect on a brand and its interests.
Management of reputational risk for organizations should take a common sense approach. Compliance training materials often refer to one of two tests: would you want to read about this on the front page of a newspaper, or, would you be comfortable discussing this action in public, say at a dinner party, with someone you admire, like a parent or mentor? If the answer is no then the action or strategy is not advisable. Having the possible public outcome from individual or organizational actions in mind before the activity is undertaken helps to maintain a view on consequences and hopefully, therefore ground the decision in practical ethics.
For a broad take on Taylor Swift and the contemporary value of reputation, check out this opinion piece in the Financial Times.
Happy Thanksgiving from Compliance Culture!
In honor of the holiday, check out this article from Wired on the regulatory history of turkey in the United States: Why It’s So Tough to Keep Antibiotics Out of Your Turkey.