SAP Creates Ethics Advisory Panel for AI
Goal is to ensure that AI capabilities maintain integrity and trust in its solutions.
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SAP SE has announced its guiding principles for artificial intelligence (AI) and the creation of an external AI ethics advisory panel.
The panel of experts from academia, politics, and industry will ensure the adoption of the principles and further develop them in collaboration with the AI steering committee at SAP, a group of SAP executives from development, strategy, and human resources.
The new guidelines, the external panel, and the internal committee aim to ensure that the AI capabilities supported by SAP Leonardo Machine Learning are used to maintain integrity and trust in all solutions. The company says its enterprise technology touches 77 percent of the world’s transaction revenue and serves more than 400,000 customers worldwide.
“SAP considers the ethical use of data a core value,” said Luka Mucic, chief financial officer and member of the executive board of SAP SE. “We want to create software that enables the intelligent enterprise and actually improves people’s lives. Such principles will serve as the basis to make AI a technology that augments human talent.”
SAP guiding principles reflect the company’s commitment to comply with the highest ethical standards. They highlight the core values SAP applies to enable business beyond bias, maintain transparency and integrity and uphold quality and safety. These principles support SAP in refusing to compromise on data protection and privacy and enable SAP to be an active participant in the community engaged in resolving the wider societal challenges of AI.
Five members of the advisory panel have been confirmed:
- Dr. theol. Peter Dabrock, chair of systematic theology (ethics), University of Erlangen-Nuernberg
- Dr. Henning Kagermann, chairman, acatech board of trustees; acatech senator
- Susan Liautaud, lecturer in public policy and law, Stanford; founder and managing director, Susan Liautaud & Associates Limited
- Dr. Helen Nissenbaum, professor, Cornell Tech Information Science
- Nicholas Wright, consultant, intelligent biology; affiliated scholar, Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics, Georgetown University Medical Center; honorary research associate, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London
SAP plans to add more members to the panel in the coming months.
“AI offers immense opportunities, but it also raises unprecedented and often unpredictable ethics challenges for society and humanity,” said Susan Liautaud. “The AI ethics advisory panel allows us to ensure an ethical AI, which serves humanity and benefits society.”
More information about SAP’s guiding principles for artificial intelligence is available here.