BetaNews Staff

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is only accelerating its adoption among global corporate enterprises, thus CEOs and business leaders are positioned at the confluence of innovation and ethics, as it relates to implementing AI projects, in their businesses. 

While technical prowess and business potential are usually the focus of conversations around AI, the ethical considerations are sometimes overlooked, especially those not immediately obvious. From a perspective that straddles the line of business leadership and technical acumen, there are five critical, yet often missed, ethical considerations in AI practices that should be part of your due diligence in starting any AI projects: 

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Malware, ransomware, and phishing. These are just a few examples of software disruptors that can wreak havoc on a business and cause major personal and financial loss.

Most recently, organizations and vendors have gotten good at protecting their business from malware and infiltrations from the outside. Their security has gone up, so it's now more difficult and expensive for an outside attacker to attack this traditional way. Additionally, organizations have gotten smarter about preventing ransomware and not falling for the ransomware attack by paying the ransom. Most organizations won't pay the ransom anymore because governments don't want them to.

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Picture this: It’s 2031, and you’re chief information security officer (CISO) at a Fortune 500 company. Alongside many other innovative and emerging threats, you’re constantly battling AI-empowered bad actors. In fact, you spend the majority of your working hours combating emerging forms of ransomware. These dangerous incursions occur once every two seconds -- more than 43,000 attacks every day -- and all organizations are extremely vulnerable.

Although harsh, this scenario may soon become a reality. Threat actors are learning to use more refined tactics to infiltrate valuable consumer data, and it’s paying dividends. In 2023 alone, ransomware attacks increased by 68 percent.

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Imagine this: every year, up to 17 employees leave your 100-person company. Within a half-decade, you could be replacing your entire workforce. That's the reality facing businesses today, with the average employee turnover rate for U.S. businesses reaching 17.3 percent, Canada at 15.5 percent, and Australia at 14 percent in 2023.

Despite these turnover rates, 71 percent of organizations lack a structured offboarding process. This lack of planning can have serious security consequences, as 20 percent of businesses have experienced data breaches linked to former employees. This oversight highlights why 76 percent of IT leaders consider offboarding a significant security threat.

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 Whether it’s the company’s commitment to the cloud, to developing its Office suite or being a lead player in the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Microsoft remains the top provider of enterprise workplace tools. Despite no shortage of competition, Microsoft passed Apple earlier this year as the largest company in the world with a market capitalization of more than three trillion dollars.

Over the last few years, much has been made of Microsoft’s investment in AI. It is the lead investor in ChatGPT and has now rolled out Copilot, its own AI offering for the workforce. Copilot is an awesome tool, which leverages and trains publicly available code to provide users with suggestions and solutions to work challenges. Used properly, Copilot offers enhanced productivity and streamlined software development processes to users.

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Generative AI (Gen AI) is no doubt the new “white hot” technology, with tremendous potential for transforming Source-to-Pay processes. In fact, AI can deliver cost savings of up to 40 percent according to research by Oxford College of Procurement & Supply. With its widespread adoption and inclusion in digital transformation initiatives across every industry, Gen AI has become a must-learn technology. It has the potential to improve productivity of Procurement teams tremendously to eliminate time consuming and repetitive tasks and free up time for more strategic thinking. In fact, Gen AI can reduce time spent on some procurement processes by up to 60 percent.

This enables Procurement teams to elevate their strategic impact and spend time on more creative aspects of the function that have a bigger impact. 

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Zero-day vulnerabilities are frequently reported on, but remain a major challenge for organizations, especially when it comes to quantifying the real threat posed by an unpatched instance of a vulnerability.

In 2023 the number of disclosed zero-days, or emerging vulnerabilities (EVs), increased from the previous year, rising from 55 in 2022 to 69 in 2023. While this wasn’t as high as the record in 2021 (with 81 disclosures) the prevalence of zero-day vulnerabilities has been rapidly trending upwards over the last 5 years. To stay ahead of the potentially devastating impact of being breached via an emerging vulnerability, organizations must be aware of how to stay ahead of attackers.

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Many organizations realize the benefits that lie within the data they collect daily. This modern approach to data empowers businesses to leverage data for innovation and monetization while at the same time enhancing security and privacy. While this may seem like a conundrum as companies have traditionally buried their data deep into IT architecture to prevent it from being accessible, even by the employees, today it is possible to have the best of both. This process starts with the cloud.

The healthcare sector is witnessing a swift surge in cloud adoption. By 2028, it is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.74 percent. This trend of rapid adoption can be seen in the financial services sector too, where organizations are moving to the cloud at an accelerated pace.

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In-house IT teams across every industry can face all manner of challenges and disruptions in their day-to-day processes. While technology is becoming more accessible and demystified, it is important to ensure that you have a team that understands emerging technology. Research from Sharp found that 63 percent of businesses lack critical technology knowledge that could help push their evolution further.

This is where co-managed IT services, which offer a collaborative approach to supporting your organization, can act as a solution. Offering a collaborative approach to IT support with external resources and expertise for managed IT, co-managed IT services can remove some of the strain your in-house team experiences. But what exactly can they assist with?

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Software as a Service (SaaS) has emerged as a cornerstone for organizations seeking flexibility, scalability, and efficiency in their operations. With the convenience of accessing applications over the internet, SaaS adoption has surged, offering unparalleled opportunities for innovation and growth. According to recent data, the global SaaS market is projected to reach $282.20 billion this year, reflecting the growing reliance on cloud-based software solutions. However, alongside these benefits come inherent security challenges that necessitate a proactive approach to risk management.

The widespread shift to remote work and the rapid adoption of cloud-based solutions, including SaaS applications, have introduced significant security challenges for organizations.

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Meeting the demands of the modern-day SMB is one of the challenges facing many business leaders and IT operators today. Traditional, office-based infrastructure was fine up until the point where greater capacity was needed than those servers could deliver, vendor support became an issue, or the needs of a hybrid workforce weren’t being met. In the highly competitive SMB space, maintaining and investing in a robust and efficient IT infrastructure can be one of the ways to stay ahead of competitors.

Thankfully, with the advent of cloud offerings, a new scalable model has entered the landscape; whether it be 20 or 20,000 users, the cloud will fit all and with it comes a much simpler, per user cost model. This facility to integrate modern computing environments in the day-to-day workplace, means businesses can now stop rushing to catch up and with this comes the invaluable peace of mind that these operations will scale up or down as required. Added to which, the potential cost savings and added value will better serve each business and help to future-proof the organization, even when on a tight budget. Cloud service solutions are almost infinitely flexible, rather than traditional on-premises options and won’t require in-house maintenance.

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Biometrics’ promise of security and convenience has unfortunately given way to widespread distrust and legitimate security concerns. If you’re unfamiliar with biometrics, think of the last time a customer service call offered you voice authentication or when you used Face ID to unlock your phone -- these are examples of collecting and storing your biometric data.

The rise of AI has undoubtedly made an impact on consumer trust in consumer biometrics, as it’s able to piece together all your biometric data for more nefarious purposes such as identity theft. This should come as no surprise as social feeds are littered with convincing deep fake videos of politicians during this election season.

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In the era of end-user computing, the terms ‘next gen’ and ‘revolutionary’ are commonly used to refer to the shift away from outdated legacy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) systems to a modern, cloud-first approach that combines on-premises and cloud environments. End-user computing (EUC) has historically been a costly IT expense, but this hybrid multi-cloud approach is a cost-effective performance booster. Contemporary solutions and strategies, including cloud-first VDI implementation, enable these systems to vastly simplify the construction, operation, and management of EUC environments, and revolutionize end-user computing.

IT leaders often face significant challenges when adopting a hybrid multi-cloud strategy, primarily due to the intricate nature of managing different private and public clouds. These complexities are further exacerbated by ongoing issues stemming from legacy VDI systems. In order to turn this source of frustration into a source of proficiency and profit, CIOs and IT leaders must look to modernize their approach.

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Apple is known for maintaining high standards when it comes to the App Store. It has put strict developer guidelines in place, runs a thorough review process on new apps that are submitted to the marketplace, and monitors apps to ensure they deliver what developers promise.

This tightly controlled environment has been established to maintain a great user experience, preserve end-user privacy, and protect the platform from bad actors, all while allowing third-party developers to create compelling experiences on Apple’s mobile platforms. Apple’s operating system design, coupled with these protective policies, has helped to keep the iPhone and the applications that run on it generally immune from widespread threats for almost two decades now.

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No technology, especially in its early adoption phase, is without fault. Even with the popularity generative AI has gained in both the eyes of businesses and consumers alike, its imperfections cannot be glossed over. Hallucinations and biases in training data, among other issues, are leading business owners to hesitate when considering adoption.

While some early adopters have found ways to adopt large language models (LLMs) as they exist today, many feel they are left with essentially two options. Wait until improvements come or governmental guidelines are put in place to ensure the safe use of the technology, potentially being left behind, or adopt now and without letting AI touch business-critical systems. Neither of these options is truly viable, so where can businesses go from here? Diving below the surface coverage of gen AI to understand both its pros and cons will help modern businesses to determine where they can safely implement LLMs tomorrow.

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