AI Through a CSR Lens: Consumer Issues and Public Policy

Abstract

Like most technologies, AI is a mixed blessing: on the one hand, it promises scientific miracles, efficiency, and freedom; on the other hand, it is fraught with a host of ethical challenges, including algorithmic bias, data privacy and security, lack of diversity and inclusion in AI technology, and potential to create largescale unemployment (Du and Xie 2021; Puntoni et al. 2021) and even threaten human extinction, as feared by many leading technologists (Center for AI Safety 2023). Increasingly, executives, researchers, and policy makers agree on the urgent need to manage and regulate AI to best realize its benefits while mitigating its risks. As businesses race to lead on AI, a productive path to socially responsible AI needs to involve not just AI executives, researchers, and engineers but also business scholars, philosophers, sociologists, ethicists, policy makers, consumer advocates, and nonprofits. Corporate social responsibility (CSR), with its rich accumulated insights from research at the intersection of business and society, provides a unique and valuable lens to address the tension between the promises versus perils of AI.