Characteristics of a responsible AI

More and more companies are relying on Artificial Intelligence (AI) when it comes to their offers, since the algorithms suggest products and services, breathe life into chatbots, and translate texts.

Pegasystems, a provider of customer loyalty software for sales, marketing, service, and operations, however, points out that you should be wary of rushing decisions and make sure you use responsible Artificial Intelligence, defining the four central characteristics of a responsible AI as follows:

Fairness
Businesses should ensure that their AI treats all genders, races, age groups, social classes, income groups, religious communities, and sexual orientations equally. To do this, they need to build bias-free AI models, proactively monitor them, and constantly analyze their results. Certainly, the aspect of fairness is often not the top priority when using AI; however, if algorithms make discriminatory decisions, this can have extremely damaging consequences for a company’s reputation and business.

Transparency
In case of doubt, companies should be able to show how their AI came to a decision. This is especially true for highly regulated industries such as financial services or insurance. For example, a financial service company recently came into the line of fire because it apparently offered women with the same income background as men worse credit card conditions. Since the company couldn’t explain how its AI came to the relevant decisions, it has been regarded as misogynistic. Companies should therefore use transparent and explainable algorithms for regulated and high-risk use cases.

Empathy
The need for companies to show empathy towards their customers has never been greater than in the stressful times of the coronavirus pandemic; hence, empathetic AI should be considered. Such AI makes decisions that are relevant, helpful, and put customers’ needs first. To do this, it must be able to consider the full context of a customer. Only...