Authors
Carolina Villegas-Galaviz
PhD student at ICADE, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, in the Doctorate Program in Business and Regional Competitiveness, Innovation, and Sustainability. She is
researcher at the Iberdrola Financial and Business Ethics Chair. She received a master’s degree in organizational government from Universidad de Navarra and also holds a degree in Philosophy from the same university.
José Luis Fernández Fernández
Professor of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (ICADE) at
Universidad Pontificia Comillas. Director of the Iberdrola Financial and Business Ethics Chair. He received his PhD in Philosophy and holds a MBA from the same university.
An analysis of the intellectual structure of the literature in Artificial Intelligence and Business Ethics
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Business Ethics, Bibliometric analysis, literature review, responsible innovation.
Track: Ethical challenges of new techologies (AI, big data, genetics, etc.)
An analysis of the intellectual structure of the literature in Artificial Intelligence and Ethics
Since the pre-industrial society, technology has changed the way that humans work (Liker et. Al., 1999; Aronowitz and Difazio, 1996). For decades, the arrival of some technologies has changed the game of business: the steam engine, electricity, and ICT are some examples. We are now at the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2016). Nowadays, technology marks the rhythm of companies and businesses. Moreover, advances in technologies are faster than academic research, and that fact affects responsible innovation. This accelerated pace of science and technology leaves
many ethical gaps to address: automation and employment, artificial intelligence and decision making, and the like. To contribute to the development of academic research in technology and ethics, the research project here presented is a bibliometric analysis of the literature regarding the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its background.
The objective of the study is to provide an intellectual structure of research in AI and business ethics. Even though some see business ethics as an immature academic discipline (Ma, 2009), the interest in this field of study is growing, proof of this are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations that appeal to the social responsibility of individuals, companies, and governments. Furthermore, as said, the ethical implications of AI in business are a pending task, which is at the begging of its academic history. Nevertheless, the interest in studying this branch of ethics and technology is not insignificant.
The Journal of Business Ethics, the one with the higher impact factor in the field, dedicates two of its special issues for 2020 to related themes: Business ethics in the era of artificial intelligence, and Ethics and the future of meaningful work. In the same vein, the editors of The Academy of Management Perspectives dedicate an editorial to invite their subscribers to write about robots, artificial intelligence, and work (Phan et. al., 2017). The editors present a literature review of eight of the most influential journals on management. They only found six articles which had among their main research objectives the relationship between work, robots, and AI. The review searched throughout the history of these journals.
The relevance of the issue and the immaturity of its academic research make essential the understanding of the state of the art of the discipline and, especially, its background. The study aims to provide an overview of the confluences of two disciplines (ethics and AI). One can argue that there is no need to do a bibliometric analysis if the discipline is so immature, but the implications of technology in business ethics has been studied from different points of view (Buchholz & Rosenthal, 2002; Davies, 1997; Peace et al., 2002; Yuthas and Dillard, 1999) and different philosophers have studied the philosophical side of technology, its implications in society (Heidegger, 1977; Habermas, 1968), and in work (Marx,1932; Bell, 1973). This background must be understood in order to answer the current and future research questions field.
In order to conquer the said, the study will examine all the references indexed in the Web of Sciences (WoS). The data was already collected, using the keywords "artificial intelligence" and "ethics," we found 1370 documents. We refined the search to "journal articles" and to areas of social sciences and technology, which gave us a total of 262 study units, and 752 references cited in them. By selecting the research areas, we wanted to make sure we get everything published on AI ethics in the three main disciplines of the study: then we search in management, philosophy, and technology journals. We were not interested in journals from areas such as medicine or other health sciences.
Since the objective is to analyse the studies of AI and business ethics, we could have reduced the search to "business ethics," but we have expanded it because, with that limit, the sample was not representative. That is, works dedicated to AI and ethics, but that do not make direct mention of "business ethics", can be essential to show an overview of the academic situation of our interest.
Our study units (262), and the number of references cited in them (752), includes only those works indexed in WoS, that is, there is a reasonably large sieve made by the platform to its databases. However, following previous studies, bibliometric analyses of business ethics (Calabretta et al., 2011; Collins, 2000; Ma, 2010), we select the platform that we thought was adequate for the investigation. The said implies both a limit for the study of the subject's broad horizon, but also provides a very rigorous analysis of those publications that are of quality and that faithfully represent the scientific population. We are implementing, on the one hand, a descriptive study of the literature, and on the other, statistical analysis to elaborate a map that schematizes the scientific production. Using citation and co-citation analysis (following Ma, 2010 and White and Griffith, 1981), we are studying authors, journals, filiation institutes, publication dates, research areas of interest, and study types (theoretical - empirical).
Our current hypothesis is that there are three main objectives in which the ethics of AI must move forward. The first refers to the definition of concepts. Ethics is a philosophical discipline; but, only a significantly low number of philosophers dedicate themselves to the study of AI ethics. Much less to the study of AI and business ethics.
This lack of interest translates into a need for theoretical concepts that serve as a basis to address ethical problems that arise in day-to-day life regarding artificial intelligence in management. The second objectives regard the research method; it is necessary to conduct empirical research. We believe that there is a lack of empirical investigation of the ethical aspects of AI. The analysis so far shows that academics allude to the need for empirical research to respond to ethical issues that companies raise when working with AI. The last aspect in which we believe that scientific research has to advance is in the definition of the role of stakeholders. According to the information analysed so far, we identified four profiles in the AI business ethics scenario: companies, employees, citizens, and governments. It is essential to delineate the role and responsibilities of each of the parties, to enhance responsible innovation of AI for business.
Our goal is to present the background that AI and ethics researchers should take into account to bolster their investigations; to show the current state of the art of research in the field and their knowledge network; but moreover, to help future research by mapping the knowledge production in the subject, so that it can enhance in a prosperous way. AI ethics research grows exponentially; WoS databases registered only 18 articles during 2015, while in 2019, 104 documents were register. The results show the need to direct research to grow fruitfully.
REFERENCES
Aronowitz, S.; Difazio, W. (1996). “High technology and work tomorrow,” The annals of the american academy of political and social science, 544, 52-67.
Bell, D. (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, New York: Basic Books.
Buchholz, R. A.; Rosenthal, S. B. (2002). “Technology and Business: Rethinking and moral dilemma,” Journal of Business Ethics, 41(1/2), 45-50.
Calabretta, G.; Durisin, B.; Ogliengo, M. (2011). “Uncovering the Intellectual Structure of Research in Business Ethics: A Journey Through the History, the Classics, and the Pillars of ‘Journal of Business Ethics’,” Journal of Business Ethics, 104(4), 499-524.
Collins, D. (2000). “The Quest to Improve the Human Condition: The First 1500 Articles Published in Journal of Business Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics, 26(1), 1-73.
Davies, P. W. (2002). “Technology and Business Ethics Theory,” Business Ethics: A European Review, 6(2), 76-80.
Habermas, J. (1968). Technik und Wissenschaft als "Idelogie," Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Heidegger, M. (1977). The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York: Harper & Row.
Liker, J. K.; Haddad, C. J. & Karlin, J. (1999). “Perspectives on technology and work organization,” Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 575-596.
Ma, Z. (2009). “The Status of Contemporary Business Ethics Research: Present and Future,” Journal of Business Ethics, 95(3), 255-265.
Marx, K. (1932). The Economic and Philosophic manuscripts of 1844 and the communist manifesto, New York: Prometheus Books.
Phan, P.; Wright, M.; Lee, S. (2017). “Of Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Work,” Academy of Management Perspectives, 31(4), 253-255.
Peace, A. G. (2002). “Ethical Issues in eBusiness: A Proposal for Creating the eBusiness Principles,” Business and Society Review, 107(1), 41-60.
White, H.; Griffith, B. (1981). “Author Co-Citation: A Literature Measure of Intellectual Structure,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 32(3), 163-171.
Yuthas, K. A.; Dillard, J. F. (1999). “Ethical Development of Advanced Technology: A Postmodern Stakeholder Perspective,” Journal of Business Ethics, 19(1), 35-49