AI, capitalism, and ethics: The urgent need for responsible governance

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming independent of human direction, moving from independence in search of information to independence in decision-making. ChatGPT, which emerged only two years ago, is a chat platform easy to use, capable of carrying on conversations and assisting with queries, superseding the search capabilities of Google. More powerful “AI agents” are emerging in various fields — medicine, finance, and warfare — agents that do not need to interact with human beings. They sense their environment through various inputs (eg text, images, sensors), analyse the information, and make decisions based on their objectives. Such developments raise ethical questions. How do these AI agents — these virtual human beings — choose their goals? What do they care about? What will life be like for real human beings when virtual humans govern their lives? The world may be run more efficiently but will it be a more just and more compassionate world?

 

Artificial citizens, business corporations: This is not the first time in history when humans have created artificial agents who govern their lives. The capitalist business corporation, which was given legal form in the 17th century, is an artificial citizen of society, given the same rights as human citizens to own property, exercise free speech, and sue other citizens (humans and other corporations). Moreover, the limited-liability corporation is a selfish citizen created by law to enable investors to exploit natural and human resources efficiently for profit with limited liability for the consequences. Corporations complain that environmental and labour regulations harm their ease of doing business and profits. Their concept of “minimum government, maximum governance” is privatisation of everything, corporations and individual citizens competing, and the “invisible hand of the market” governing everything.

 

Chief executive officers (CEOs) and board members of corporations may be compassionate humans individually. Collectively, they have a fiduciary responsibility under corporate law to serve the interests of investors in the corporation. A corporation does not have the conscience of a human being. Therefore, “conscious capitalism” evangelists struggle to make an adequate impact on corporate behaviour, even in companies led by compassionate CEOs.

 

Without human feelings and consciousness, AI, like any technology, is an ethics-free enterprise. Allowing selfish business corporations to own and propagate powerful technologies like AI, whose potential impacts are not fully grasped, is not a good idea. Techno-enthusiasts dismiss resisters of new technologies as “anti-progress” Luddites. Ultimately, new technologies have always turned out beneficial, they say. They ignore the decades it takes societies and economies to adapt.

 

Impacts of transitions: Economists’ theories of free trade strip out social realities, say Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, authors of Good Economics for Hard Times. They explain the stickiness of socio-economic systems. While deregulation of economies, for example, may increase gross domestic product in the long run, it produces many winners and losers during transitions, which can take a generation or longer. Scientists’ models of climate change and scientific solutions for rapid decarbonisation of the economy exclude disruptions of livelihoods during transitions, which will take decades. Technological transitions on top of liberal economic reforms minimising the role of governments are disrupting the livelihoods of billions of people in poorer countries.

 

Powerful technologies are invariably dual-use: Usable for good and harm. Products of the defence, finance, and digital technology industries can be used for the public good; they can also cause widespread social disruption and destroy lives. Institutional capacity for their regulation has not kept up with their development. Potential misuse of nuclear technology was prevented unfairly by those in power, who were the first to misuse it, and they now control its use by others. The potential of AI to do good as well as harm is much more than all technologies invented so far, according to its inventors. Further development and proliferation of defence, finance, synthetic biology, and AI technologies must be regulated effectively before it is too late, with action along three tracks.

 

1. Sincere cooperation with regulation. CEOs and investors in large business corporations — in defence, finance, technology, health care, and other industries — which have large societal impacts, pretend they care for the public good. In practice, they promote the narrow interests of their shareholders, which is their self-serving, fiduciary responsibility. They bring money power, along with their lawyers and experts they pay, into negotiations where they overpower the voices of civil society. They must learn to listen to other points of view and to cooperate and develop regulations for the good of all citizens.

 

2. Institutional innovation. Humanity has progressed over millennia with both technological and institutional innovations. Electoral democracy is an innovation with a short history so far. Laws to protect the rights of all citizens equally — rich and poor, men and women — are yet evolving. A business corporation listed on the stock market is also an institutional innovation. It is a selfish virtual citizen of society created with enforceable laws. The time has come to evolve a genuine social enterprise that is legally accountable to all stakeholders; moreover, primarily to society, not its financial supporters.

 

3. Promote corporate statesmanship. The stock market is not an appropriate evaluator of the fundamentals of an economy or a company. Many young people want to shape a better world. They don’t know how. They need better role models. The world needs corporate leaders who demonstrate conviction and courage to consistently apply human and ethical values in preference over the financial valuations of their businesses. Management schools and the business media should showcase their stories as role models, rather than stories of self-aggrandising unicorns and billionaires. When I ask my friends in management education and business media why they do not do this, they say they too are running businesses. They must give the market what it wants. They too have become mere followers of popular demand, bobbing along like corks on the surface, rather than shapers of waves of change for a better future for all.

 

The author is chairman, HelpAge International