Embracing a Human-Centered Approach (3)

Introduce, don’t overwhelm with, the ethical implications of AI. In my decades of working with emerging technology, I’ve never encountered anything that raises more complex ethical questions than AI. However, I’ve designed this book to provide an accessible introduction to AI rather than an exhaustive exploration of these issues. We desperately need a broader and deeper understanding of AI’s risks, implications, and downstream impacts. This book will give you a foundation for understanding, but it does not cover everything you should know about how to use AI responsibly. My hope is that you’ll be inspired to dive deeper—and a great place to start is with the additional resources included on my companion website that more fully explore this critical topic.

Give you paths to fast-track this material.My priority is to help you start using AI tools right away in ways that deliver real value to you, and I encourage you to choose your own speed and depth for moving through this material. If you want to leap in right away, go straight to the three-step A3 Framework in Part Three, and pair it with the exercise sets you’ll find on my website referred to in that chapter. If you want to ground yourself in what’s happening in this moment, take the time to also read Part One and Part Two. If you are reading this book as part of a team, make sure you don’t skip Chapter Sixteen because it will give you some helpful tips to support your team’s learning journey. The entire book is designed to be easily skimmed so that you can quickly find and dip into the areas that are most interesting to you.

However you choose to engage with this material, you’ve already taken the most important step: deciding to better understand and harness AI’s potential.

4. Above All, Use AI Responsibly

Every human can boost their capacity to create with AI. But not every human will leverage this new power for good. Like any tool since the dawn of humanity—from stone and steel to the internet—AI will be used for both positive and negative ends. We’re already witnessing bad actors employing AI to amplify their harmful impacts, even as others use it to advance solutions to some of the toughest problems we collectively face.

Some uses of AI draw clear ethical lines—contrast researchers accelerating cancer research with criminals automating sophisticated fraud. But in your daily life, you’ll likely face more nuanced choices and complex ethical terrain.

If AI helped spark your initial ideas, does it deserve citation? Can students ethically use it as a thought partner before writing an essay on their own? What if your coworker is using AI to produce superior work but your corporate policies on the use of AI are unclear? Should they be promoted, disciplined, or simply required to share their AI-assisted methods transparently?

We’re navigating what I call the “in-between time”—a period where our traditional systems and ethical frameworks haven’t caught up to this disruptive technology shift. While AI has been in development for many decades, the complicated challenges that broad access to sophisticated AI introduces are new. We lack guidelines and social norms to navigate these gray areas, and both the capabilities and spread of this technology have already outpaced our human, organizational, and regulatory frameworks. AI is likely to put us through one of the most tumultuous periods of change in the labor landscape that we will face across our lifetimes. But our world also faces wicked challenges such as food insecurity, environmental degradation, mental health crises, water scarcity, cybersecurity threats, and pandemic preparedness, and we really could use some superhuman capabilities to help us solve them. What is clear is that AI is a massively complex topic.

Start Now, Even Without Complete Clarity

Every significant new wave of technology has brought unprecedented opportunity—along with terribly difficult problems we weren’t fully prepared for. Even technology that we regard as quite basic today—such as electricity—brought both fear and excitement with their introduction.[i] But the power of AI—coupled with the staggering speed at which it is evolving—is already making both the opportunities it presents and the problems it introduces more pronounced than any other technology wave we’ve experienced. How we will navigate these and what this will mean to us years from now is not clear, and it won’t be for some time. But if you wait for the dust to settle, and the future to become clear, you will have been left behind in that dust.

I work to help people use AI to boost learning, creativity, and cognitive abilities so they aren’t left behind in this new era. Because the space is moving fast, that work means jumping in even as our understanding of how to use AI responsibly is still evolving. I can’t give you specific guidance on all the ethical questions this technology raises because we haven’t figured out the answers as a society, and there is much work ahead. What I can tell you is that the arrival of universally accessible AI puts a high moral obligation on everyone who uses these tools to be discerning and intentional as we consider where, when, and how to use them.

Don’t Cede Authority to AI . . . Yet: Keep yourself firmly in the driver’s seat. While AI can inform and enhance your choices, your judgment and oversight remain essential as we work to better understand, govern, and use these powerful systems. Do not delegate important decisions to AI or let its confidence sway you in a direction that doesn’t feel right to you. I must emphasize that for students, this means limiting your use of tools to supporting your learning, not doing the work for you, but also requires you to work with your school administration to understand how they are evaluating the ethical use of AI.

Practice AI Transparency:Be upfront about where and how you involved AI in your work. Transparency is crucial to establishing trust in your work in a world in which it is becoming increasingly hard for us to understand whether something was created by human or machine.

Remain Vigilant for AI’s Shortcomings: AI is notorious for “hallucinations” (making things up), biases, and flawed or incomplete outputs. It’s critical to maintain a skeptical eye and avoid blindly trusting AI-generated content or conclusions. Maintain human scrutiny, fact-checking, and critical thinking to navigate these shortcomings responsibly.