Ethical Considerations

There is a lot of fear and concern regarding the use of AI and the place of technology within any pre-existing creative process as uncertainty and doubt is inevitable when it could change a workflow or established practice. It is human nature to resist any change and be wary of its impact, it is important to consider any new technology or process change as having it’s advantages and drawbacks as such we should and must consider the ethical concerns and address these head on.

AI can be seen as a disrupter much like online streaming services were seen as disruptor to pre-established distribution channels. We are going to have a look at some of the ethical concerns AI in general can raise being aware that this list is by no means complete and somewhat subjective as opinions / parameters change as technology influencing production process changes.

-     Job security

One of the biggest widely accepted concerns people have with any change to workflows is the impact this may have on job security, roles and the general day to day operations and human skills required to work and earn a living. It would be somewhat incorrect to assume that AI won’t change the way people work, role titles and even the perceived requirement for certain human-centric tasks this ‘evolution’ of change in process is nothing new historical as the needs of the populace change, the need to refine production processes also adapt and change. Historically we have seen such changes incrementally since people have worked as we refine processes, speed up workflows and maximise outputs wether this has been for the better or worse. The biggest workforce shake up could be seen as the Industrial Revolution where by many jobs done by hand were given to machines that required fewer operators to generate similar results, this led to a huge shift in labour and thus skill sets required within the workforce which had negative impacts on wide communities and met opposition, ethically these changes can be seen driven by financial incentive and the human factor i.e. emotions, skills and personal touch of individuality people can bring can become lost and diminished.

We have been seeing a technological revolution over the past few decades where more and more tasks are involving semi automated processes or computers somewhere within the production pipeline, this has led to changes in career requirements which will always bring into fear job security with AI being along this vein.

-     Change in process

-     Skills being lost or retraining required

-     Monopolisation

-     Copyright and ownership