186: Beyond Good Intentions: Making AI Ethics Actionable with Laura Miller

Living On The Edge of Chaos

In this episode, I am so excited to share this conversation with Laura Miller who is an AI Ethicist.

An innovative and logical-minded AI and Ethics Specialist with an extensive background in creating ethical AI policies, developing strategies and processes to overcome challenges, and providing practical guidance in fast-paced, high-growth companies from start-ups to Fortune 500. Strategic leader with a solid business background and high cultural, ethical, and emotional intelligence. Excels at providing insight, guidance, collaborating across multiple verticals, and creating an inclusive workplace for all employees. I also serve as an advisor, council member, and task force leader for various organizations and initiatives in the AI and ethics space and as a presenter, panelist, and keynote speaker on ethics and technology topics.

Advisory Roles:
• Trustmark Advisory Board - Open Voice Network
• Tech-Ethics Advisor- Trauma Informed Network Advisory Board
• Ethics Council - Meta-Brain Labs
• Ethical Use Task Force - Open Voice Network
• Inclusion Plan Panelist - NASA

Presenter, Speaker, Panelist, Keynote, and Conference Chair | Author | Founder - NextGen Ethics | Policy Manager and Strategist | Transforming AI, Tech, and Organizations for a Better World | Digital Humanitarian

[e-mail] | lmiller-ethicist.com

LISTEN NOW:

• Apple Podcast – Find this episode and all the previous episodes on Apple Podcast
• Spotify – Find this episode and previous episodes of the show on Spotify!
• YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1AMM-j9neg

ROSE 🌹

Laura Miller's expertise in applied ethics provided valuable insights into the integration of ethical practices in AI.

Emphasis on making well-intentioned statements actionable was appreciated.

Recognition of people's lived experiences and responding with empathy was highlighted as crucial.

Leadership in ethics was discussed, emphasizing that leaders should demonstrate ethical behavior through actions.

How might we:

Further integrate actionable ethical statements into our product development process?

Enhance our leadership training to include a stronger focus on demonstrating ethical behavior?

Provide more practical examples or case studies during such discussions?

Address potential challenges when integrating ethics into technology and business?

Leverage this trend towards greater integration of ethics into our own operations?

Encourage employees to adopt these suggested lifestyle habits to foster a culture of everyday ethics?

CHALLENGES & GOALS

• The primary challenge discussed was making ethics tangible and actionable across different sectors, particularly within AI.
• The goal is to promote ethical innovation within businesses and how they can implement AI ethically.

SURPRISING TAKEAWAYS

• Laura views everyone as capable of doing ethics, regardless of their role or profession.
• Laura emphasizes the need for balance between business interests and ethical considerations.

EMERGING PATTERNS

• Importance of action in ethics - it's not enough to simply talk about ethics; one must actively engage in ethical behavior.
• Need for metrics in demonstrating ethical actions, similar to how achievements are measured in other fields.
• Call for greater dialogue around ethics and a push towards making more deliberate and considered choices.

KEY MOMENTS

Quotes from Laura Miller:

1. ....anyone can empower someone else. Anyone can disempower someone else. The thing is whether or not you're gonna be a catalyst for change in what's actually being done.
2. ....there are tangible things that we can do to back up those kinds of overarching statements, most people or many will stop at the statement and not take it any further. It sounds very much like a mission or a vision, but without action, you can't bring it into fruition. So it stays a mission and vision that stay these lofty ideals, largely unattainable because there's no method to the madness of how to get there.
3. ....people have learned that good intentions will only take you so far
4. ....my question to you back is so what you doing? Because it always comes back to that we're doing. What are you doing? You know, what does that actually look like? What things have you done?
5. We hired the right percentage of people doesn't matter if what you've actually done is given them a hollow role with no authority and no budget and no capability to do something to you doing should be able to spur the doing of someone else. In other words, you should be giving them the capabilities to do things too.
6. Anyone can empower someone else. Anyone can disempower someone else. The thing is whether or not you're gonna be a catalyst for change in what's actually being done.
7. One of the greatest problems that we have in our world is that we lost track of what the people need, how they should be treated and what we really need from our world, from our society, from the businesses we do, business with and are in a relationship with, from our employment.
8. And my concern was when we're making decisions for groups or for large numbers of people or in this instance, when we talk about who the library can influence, we're talking about a group of people. And when we're making a decision like that, both people, both sides, multiple sides, there shouldn't just be two, multiple sides serve to be heard so that we can find out when we're making decisions for groups where that balance point is......But it(AI) shortcut all that reflection and even that, how do we find that balance point between competing ideas and none of that happened and said the books were gone. So my concern about that was do we want some of those decisions to be made that quickly?

RESOURCES

• Laura Miller, MA Ethics profile on LinkedIn
• Shadowing AI
• Applied Ethical AI Innovation Matrix
• Broken Mirror Theory