Understanding AI Ethics in the Workplace

Finished Project

In line with advances in technological developments, AI has expanded into various business sectors and workplaces – often, due to its higher speed and efficiency gains in business practices. However, the introduction of AI-enabled tools and processes in the workplace also comes along with ethical risks and the opportunity of misuse by employees and organizations.

For example, by misusing personal data and thereby violating the privacy rights of employees or customers, AI applications could create serious conflicts with what society typically considers ethical. In this way, the new AI technologies pose new ethical challenges to companies and require organizational standards that firms may and should implement to ensure the ethical use of AI in the workplace.

This research project aims to give an overview of the current status of AI ethics in the workplace. To this end, we will analyze the data from the “Ethics at Work” survey that will be conducted by the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) and covers questions related to AI ethics in the workplace. In doing so, we investigate the level of implementation of AI and AI-specific ethical use guidelines across organizations, as well as employees’ view on the occurrence of ethical misconduct related to AI technologies.

Moreover, we aim to determine whether employees who personally work with AI are more or less likely to have concerns about potential misuse of AI compared to those who do not.
Based on the analysis of the survey data, we will develop and publish a white paper on the landscape of AI ethics in the workplace, creating a baseline for future studies and research collaborations.