Latin America: The Challenge of Capitalizing on AI and Remaining in Control
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Ethical and responsible use of this technology is crucial for the future of business, which is becoming increasingly important for Latin American companies.
The massification of generative AI by the end of 2022 revealed its potential to improve industries, boost human skills in the workplace, and rethink business for the future. It was also a wake-up call, as many people began to understand firsthand the inherent risks of interacting directly with the power of AI.
This significant change was highlighted in the third edition of the report Artificial Intelligence in Latin America 2023, developed by NTT DATA in collaboration with MIT Technology Review.
On the one side, 71% of organizations in the region say that this innovation offers tremendous potential opportunities for their business. On the other side, ethical and responsibility concerns, barely mentioned in previous editions, are now gaining more prominence, and emerging as one of the main challenges for companies in their journey towards AI.
This topic is not just a drop in the ocean. Generative customer-facing AI, for example, promotes a new and attractive experience, it is true, but at the same time, it opens up reputational risks (as a result of hallucinations or biased responses) or even data misuse.
That is why it is just as crucial for Latin American organizations concerned about it to take action. In the study, 50% of the organizations listed four ethical principles as "fundamental" in the design and development of AI: transparency -that users understand how it works and what information the AI is using to obtain its results-privacy, security, and responsibility. This last implies that the "owners" of the solution are responsible for the decisions taken by the AI, including the possible damage it may cause.
Raising awareness is the first concrete action an organization can take to ensure a more careful use of AI. Every employee must understand the issue's importance and the potential impacts of improper use.
Contrary to what happened until very recently, the number of people using AI is no longer limited to data scientists or technology experts. AI is now democratized, and employees from all sectors use it for their daily tasks.
The second step consists of creating the areas, departments, committees, and processes to ensure continuous audit monitoring, ethics, responsibility checks, and updates for each AI solution implemented and used by the company. Once again, the democratization of this technology makes governance a real challenge.
The excellent news is the regulatory framework recently approved by the European Union, namely the "AI Act." This legislation acts as a reference and can become for AI what the GDPR was for data privacy, inspiring other countries to create their regulations.
Ethical issues in the use of AI transcend corporations. It requires the commitment of governments that regulators define rules and penalties according to each country's values and culture and that the industry advances in the evolution of this technology, always prioritizing it as a tool for society's benefit.
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