Why business and law students must learn to think ethically about artificial intelligence

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Why business and law students must learn to think ethically about artificial intelligence

Monday, 10 July 2023

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The ability to act ethically and think creatively will be crucial skills for business and law graduates amid the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, according to Dr Sean Goltz, a Senior Lecturer in ECU’s School of Business and Law.

“Graduates must be able to take advantage of intrinsically human qualities if they want to be successful in AI-driven workplaces,” said Dr Goltz, the author of a new paradigm shifting book, Real World AI Ethics for Data Scientists, published by Taylor & Francis.

“One of the problems we’re seeing is that people just don’t know what being ethical is,” Dr Goltz said. “All students need to be aware that these tools have influence over our entire lives. They need to be aware of the ethical implications.”

Dr Goltz’ comments come after IBM CEO’s Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg News it expected to pause hiring for certain roles since approximately 7,800 jobs could be replaced by AI in the coming years.

One of the issues highlighted in Goltz’s new book is deepfakes, which use AI to generate completely new video, images, or audio, with the end goal of portraying something that didn’t occur in reality.

An example discussed in the book is Gabon’s President Ali Bongo appearing on video to give his traditional New Year’s address in 2018. President Bongo had suffered a stroke three months earlier and hadn’t been seen since.

The impression that the President’s appearance could have been a result of deepfake technology, and hence that he was in fact dead, resulted in an attempted coup d’état by members of the military, which caused the death of nine people.

While experts have since confirmed the video was genuine, Dr Goltz said it demonstrated how the lines between the virtual and the real are becoming increasingly “blurry”, especially with AI’s growing capabilities.

Therefore, Dr Goltz suggested that business and law students would need to learn theories such as the Artificial Medium Law Theory, explained in his previous book, The Imaginationless Generation, to manage modern-day technology.

“It’s one thing when ChatGPT gives an answer and it’s in text format, which one should be suspicious of anyway,” Dr Goltz – who posted on LinkedIn a false answer given by ChatGPT citing a fictional case law – explained.

“But the second level is if you’d hear it with a voice of someone very authoritative.

“For example, imagine if you saw a video of the Chief Justice saying it and it’s wrong, but you can see him and hear his voice … a key thing is to know what is real and what is not.”.

Or as Elon Musk put it, “Always assume you are being manipulated”.

Dr Sean Goltz’s research focuses on the intersection of ethics, technology, and religion.

School of Business and Law