Creativity & Creation

Technological Opportunity and Ethical Anxiety

By Nick Dietrich (OWU Assistant Professor of Data Analytics)

In April 2023, a group of senior OWU students majoring in data analytics designed an opinion survey about artificial intelligence in the workplace. We sampled 1,000 respondents divided evenly among four different employment sectors: healthcare, education, technology, and retail.

The results of our survey demonstrate a great deal of optimism about the possibilities—and anxiety about the realities—of how this technology will be used.

More than 80 percent of the respondents in each employment sector said they have used artificial intelligence technology. AI use was most prominent among workers in the technology sector (95 percent had used it).

At a glance, respondents appeared enthusiastic about AI; a plurality in each employment sector reported that they expect AI to enhance their work. Workers in the technology sector were the most optimistic about the possibilities of AI (60 percent believed it would enhance their work, and 8 percent believed it would detract), while workers in retail were the least likely to believe that AI would be relevant in their workplace (47 percent enhance, 8 percent detract).

Although most respondents were optimistic about AI, their written comments reveal a great deal of anxiety about the ways AI will be used.

Many fear AI would replace human workers. One wrote, "I feel like AI has the potential to take my job."

Others pointed out that AI can be a benefit or detriment to humanity depending on its use. One wrote, "AI can never replace human judgment, and sacrificing human judgment for perceived 'efficiency' is foolhardy."

This picture of AI is nuanced, but it's also consistent with reality.

AI has been used to make impressive advances in medical imaging and everyday technology. Consider, for example, all of the AI in your smartphone; it uses machine learning to recognize your face, predict the weather, and suggest words you might use in your text messages.

At the same time, this technology has also been used to worsen inequality. Students in my data analytics courses are often surprised to learn about widely used facial recognition systems that are ineffective at identifying faces with darker skin. Generative AI applications that write words or create images are trained using works from artists who never receive credit. Reuters reported that Amazon even attempted to use AI to evaluate job applicants but found that their AI system discriminated against women.

Like all technology, AI can create new possibilities, but it can also drive inequality and threaten human welfare. That's why I teach OWU students to be thoughtful about technical and ethical aspects of algorithms. It's up to the next generation of OWU students to build a future where the use of AI is ethical and empathetic.