Abstract
The pervasiveness of AI-empowered technologies across multiple sectors has led to drastic changes concerning traditional social practices and how we relate to one another. Moreover, market-driven Big Tech corporations are now entering public domains, and concerns have been raised that they may even influence public agenda and research. Therefore, this chapter focusses on assessing and evaluating what kind of business model is desirable to incentivise the AI for Social Good (AI4SG) factors. In particular, the chapter explores the implications of this discourse for SDG #17 (global partnership) and how this goal may encourage Big Tech corporations to strengthen multi-stakeholder partnerships that promote effective public-private and civil society partnerships and the meaningful co-presence of non-market and market values. In doing so, the chapter proposes an analysis of the sociological notion of ‘social license to operate’ (SLO) elaborated in the mining and extractive industry literature and introduces it into the discourse on sustainable digital business models and responsible management of risks in the digital age. This serves to explore how such a social license can be adopted as a practice by digital business models to foster trust, collaboration and coordination among different actors – including AI researchers and initiatives, institutions and civil society at large – for the support of SDGs interrelated targets and goals.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
AIA 2021, 39; cf. Annexe 1 on Artificial Intelligence Techniques and Approaches: (a) Machine learning approaches, including supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning, using a wide variety of methods including deep learning; (b) logic- and knowledge-based approaches, including knowledge representation, inductive (logic) programming, knowledge bases, inference and deductive engines, (symbolic) reasoning and expert systems; (c) statistical approaches, Bayesian estimation, search and optimisation methods; see European Commission 2021.
- 2.
Vineusa et al. (2020) found evidence of positive AI contributions on 15% of SDG 17’s subgoals and negative contributions to 5% of its subgoals.
- 3.
Specifically, Vineusa et al. (2020) referred to Open AI (project description: https://openai.com/); partnership for AI (project description: https://www.partnershiponai.org/); AINow (project description: https://ainowinstitute.org/); AI Sustainability Centre in Stockholm (project description: http://www.aisustainability.org/). They also provided reference to Smith & Neupane (2018) and Greene et al. (2019).
- 4.
Oxford Initiative on AIxSDGs. https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/research/centres-and-initiatives/oxford-initiative-aisdgs. On the projects related to the promotion of SDG 17, see https://www.aiforsdgs.org/all-projects?sustainable_development%5B%5D=1356&search=d (Last access 4 October 2021).
- 5.
Such a term is used also by Daño (2019), 188.
- 6.
Boutilier and Thomson speak of ‘stakeholder networks’ to include many actors that are affected or affect business models beyond and above specific and local communities, such as international human rights activists and others (Boutilier and Thomson 2011, 2–3).
- 7.
See also Joseph, L.2018 Why the tech giants of Silicon Valley must rebuild trust after explosive beginnings available at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/why-move-fast-and-break-things-doesn-t-cut-it-anymore/ (last access October 4, 2021).
- 8.
See, for example, Schulze 2019. If you want to know what a US tech crackdown may look like, check out what Europe did, June 7, 2019, available at https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/07/how-google-facebook-amazon-and-apple-faced-eu-tech-antitrust-rules.html (last access October 4, 2021).
References
Amnesty International. 2014. Amnesty International Launches New App to Fight Attack, Kidnap and Torture. Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/06/amnesty-international-launches-new-app-fight-attack-kidnap-and-torture/
Ballew, Matthew T., Matthew H. Goldberg, Seth A. Rosenthal, Abel Gustafson, and Anthony Leiserowitz. 2019. Systems Thinking as a Pathway to Global Warming Beliefs and Attitudes Through an Ecological Worldview. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (17): 8214–8219. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1819310116.
Blair, Margaret M. 2008. The New Role for Assurance Services in Global Commerce. Journal of Corporation Law 325. https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/30/.
Boutilier, Robert G. 2017. A Measure of the Social License to Operate for Infrastructure and Extractive Projects. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3204005.
Boutilier, Robert G., and Ian Thomson. 2011. Modelling and Measuring the Social License to Operate: Fruits of a Dialogue Between Theory and Practice. Socialicense.Com. https://socialicense.com/publications/Modelling%20and%20Measuring%20the%20SLO.pdf
Briscoe, Patricia. 2015. Global Systems Thinking in Education to End Poverty: Systems Leaders with a Concerted Push. International Studies In Educational Administration (Commonwealth Council For Educational Administration & Management (CCEAM)) 43 (3): 5–19. https://www.academia.edu/34485128/Global_Systems_Thinking_in_Education_to_End_Poverty_Systems_Leaders_with_a_Concerted_Push.
Capasso, Marianna, and Steven Umbrello. 2021. Responsible Nudging for Social Good: New Healthcare Skills for AI-Driven Digital Personal Assistants. Medicine, Health Care And Philosophy 25: 11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-021-10062-z.
Cowls, Josh, Andreas Tsamados, Mariarosaria Taddeo, and Luciano Floridi. 2021. A Definition, Benchmark and Database of AI for Social Good Initiatives. Nature Machine Intelligence 3 (2): 111–115. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-021-00296-0.
Culpepper, Pepper D., and Kathleen Thelen. 2019. Are We All Amazon Primed? Consumers and the Politics of Platform Power. Comparative Political Studies 53 (2): 288–318. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414019852687.
Daño, Neth. 2019. SDG 17. Can the Technology Facilitation Mechanism Help Deliver the Sdgs in the Era of Rapid Technological Change? Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2019. United Nations. https://www.2030spotlight.org/sites/default/files/spot2019/Spotlight_Innenteil_2019_web_sdg17.pdf.
Demuijnck, Geert, and Björn Fasterling. 2016. The Social License to Operate. Journal of Business Ethics 136 (4): 675–685. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2976-7.
Department of Health and Social Care. 2019. NHS Health Information Available Through Amazon’s Alexa. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-health-information-available-through-amazon-s-alexa.
Di Vaio, Assunta, Rosa Palladino, Rohail Hassan, and Octavio Escobar. 2020. Artificial Intelligence and Business Models in the Sustainable Development Goals Perspective: A Systematic Literature Review. Journal of Business Research 121: 283–314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.08.019.
European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology. 2021. Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council Laying Down Harmonised Rules on Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act) and Amending Certain Union Legislative Acts Com/2021/206 Final. European Commission. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:52021PC0206.
Floridi, Luciano, Josh Cowls, J., Thomas C. King, and Mariarosaria Taddeo. 2020. How to Design AI for Social Good: Seven Essential Factors. Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (3): 1771–1796. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00213-5
Gazzaneo, Lucia, Antonio Padovano, and Steven Umbrello. 2020. Designing Smart Operator 4.0 For Human Values: A Value Sensitive Design Approach. Procedia Manufacturing 42: 219–226. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.promfg.2020.02.073.
Gehman, Joel, Lianne M. Lefsrud, and Stewart Fast. 2017. Social License to Operate: Legitimacy by Another Name? Canadian Public Administration 60 (2): 293–317. https://doi.org/10.1111/capa.12218.
Greene, Daniel, Anna Lauren Hoffmann, and Luke Stark. 2019. Better, Nicer, Clearer, Fairer: A Critical Assessment of the Movement for Ethical Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Hawaii International Conference On System Sciences. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/59651.
Isaak, Jim, and Mina J. Hanna. 2018. User Data Privacy: Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and Privacy Protection. Computer 51 (8): 56–59. https://doi.org/10.1109/mc.2018.3191268.
Joseph, Lauren. 2018. Why the Tech Giants of Silicon Valley Must Rebuild Trust After Explosive Beginnings. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/why-move-fast-and-break-things-doesn-t-cut-it-anymore/.
Kersting, Kristian, Zhao Xu, Mirwaes Wahabzada, Christian Bauckhage, Christian Thurau, Christoph Roemer, Agim Ballvora, Uwe Rascher, Jens Leon, and Lutz Pluemer. 2012. Pre-symptomatic Prediction of Plant Drought Stress Using Dirichlet-Aggregation Regression on Hyperspectral Images. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI’12), 302–308. AAAI Press.
Komnitsas, Konstantinos. 2020. Social License to Operate in Mining: Present Views and Future Trends. Resources 9 (6): 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources9060079.
Kotler, Philip, and Nancy Lee. 2005. Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause. Hoboken: Wiley.
Longo, Francesco, Letizia Nicoletti, and Antonio Padovano. 2017. Smart Operators in Industry 4.0: A Human-Centered Approach to Enhance Operators’ Capabilities and Competencies Within the New Smart Factory Context. Computers & Industrial Engineering 113: 144–159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2017.09.016.
Ma, Wei, Kendall Nowocin, Niraj Marathe, and George H. Chen. 2019. An Interpretable Produce Price Forecasting System for Small and Marginal Farmers in India Using Collaborative Filtering and Adaptive Nearest Neighbors. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development. https://doi.org/10.1145/3287098.3287100.
Meesters, Marieke Evelien, and Jelle Hendrik Behagel. 2017. The Social Licence to Operate: Ambiguities and the Neutralization of Harm in Mongolia. Resources Policy 53: 274–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2017.07.006.
Melé, Domènec, and Jaume Armengou. 2015. Moral Legitimacy in Controversial Projects and Its Relationship with Social License to Operate: A Case Study. Journal of Business Ethics 136 (4): 729–742. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2866-z.
Moffat, Kieren, Justine Lacey, Airong Zhang, and Sina Leipold. 2015. The Social Licence to Operate: A Critical Review. Forestry 89 (5): 477–488. https://doi.org/10.1093/forestry/cpv044.
Morrison, John. 2014. Government Approval Not Enough, Businesses Need Social License. Ihrb.Org. https://www.ihrb.org/focus-areas/commodities/government-approval-not-enough-businesses-need-social-license.
Murphy, Colleen, Paolo Gardoni, Hassan Bashir, Charles E. Harris, and Jr., and Eyad Masad. 2015. Engineering Ethics For A Globalized World. Switzerland: Springer, Cham.
Pasquale, Frank A. 2015. The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pollman, Elizabeth. 2019. Tech, Regulatory Arbitrage, and Limits. European Business Organization Law Review 567. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2567: 567.
Quinn, John, Kevin Leyton-Brown, and Ernest Mwebaze. 2011. Modeling and Monitoring Crop Disease in Developing Countries. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 25 (1): 1390–1395. https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/7811.
Rahman, K. Sabeel. 2018. The New Utilities: Private Power, Social Infrastructure, and the Revival of the Public Utility Concept. Cardozo Law Review 39 (5): 101–171. http://cardozolawreview.com/the-new-utilities-private-power-social-infrastructure-and-the-revival-of-the-public-utility-concept/.
Rahman, K. Sabeel, and Kathleen Thelen. 2019. The Rise of the Platform Business Model and the Transformation of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism. Politics and Society 47 (2): 177–204. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329219838932.
Reisman, Dillon, Meredith Whittaker, and Kate Crawford. 2018. Algorithms Are Making Government Decisions. The Public Needs to Have a Say. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/algorithms-are-making-government-decisions.
Sætra, Henrik Skaug. 2021a. A Framework for Evaluating and Disclosing the ESG Related Impacts of AI with the Sdgs. Sustainability 13 (15): 8503. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13158503.
———. 2021b. AI in Context and the Sustainable Development Goals: Factoring in the Unsustainability of the Sociotechnical System. Sustainability 13 (4): 1738. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041738.
Sale, Hillary A. 2019. Social License And Publicness. SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3403706.
Schulze, Elizabeth. 2019. If You Want to Know What a US Tech Crackdown May Look Like, Check Out What Europe Did. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/07/how-google-facebook-amazon-and-apple-faced-eu-tech-antitrust-rules.html.
Schwan, Gesine. 2019. Sustainable Development Goals: A Call for Global Partnership and Cooperation. GAIA – Ecological Perspectives For Science And Society 28 (2): 73–73. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.28.2.1.
Sharon, Tamar. 2016. The Googlization of Health Research: From Disruptive Innovation to Disruptive Ethics. Personalized Medicine 13 (6): 563–574. https://doi.org/10.2217/pme-2016-0057.
———. 2021. From Hostile Worlds to Multiple Spheres: Towards a Normative Pragmatics of Justice for the Googlization of Health. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 24 (3): 315–327. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-021-10006-7.
Shaw, James A., Nayha Sethi, and Christine K. Cassel. 2020. Social License for the Use of Big Data in the COVID-19 Era. Npj Digital Medicine 3 (1): 128. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-020-00342-y.
Smith, Matthew, and Sujaya Neupane. 2018. Artificial Intelligence and Human Development: Toward a Research Agenda. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. http://hdl.handle.net/10625/56949.
Srnicek, Nick. 2016. Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Thompson, Ian, and Robert Boutilier. 2011. Social License to Operate. In SME Mining Engineering Handbook, 1779–1796. Littleton, CO: Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration.
Thompson, Ian, and Susan Joyce. 2008. The Social Licence to Operate: What It Is and Why Does It Seem so Difficult to Obtain? Presentation, Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Convention, Toronto.
Tomašev, Nenad, Julien Cornebise, Frank Hutter, Shakir Mohamed, Angela Picciariello, Bec Connelly, Danielle C.M. Belgrave, et al. 2020. AI for Social Good: Unlocking the Opportunity for Positive Impact. Nature Communications 11 (1): 71. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15871-z.
Truby, Jon. 2020. Governing Artificial Intelligence to Benefit the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainable Development 28 (4): 946–959. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2048.
Umbrello, Steven, and Ibo van de Poel. 2021. Mapping Value Sensitive Design Onto AI for Social Good Principles. AI And Ethics 1 (3): 283–296. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-021-00038-3.
United Nations. 2015. Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Sdgs.Un.Org. https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda.
van de Poel, Ibo. 2020. Embedding Values in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Systems. Minds and Machines 30 (3): 385–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-020-09537-4.
Vargo, Deedra, Lin Zhu, Briana Benwell, and Zheng Yan. 2020. Digital Technology Use During COVID – 19 Pandemic: A Rapid Review. Human Behavior And Emerging Technologies 3 (1): 13–24. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.242.
Verbin, Ivri. 2020. Corporate Responsibility in the Digital Age. London: Routledge.
Vernim, Susanne, Harald Bauer, Erwin Rauch, Marianne Thejls Ziegler, and Steven Umbrello. 2022. A Value Sensitive Design Approach for Designing AI-Based Worker Assistance Systems in Manufacturing. Vol. 200, 505. Procedia Computer Science.
Vinuesa, Ricardo, Hossein Azizpour, Iolanda Leite, Madeline Balaam, Virginia Dignum, Sami Domisch, Anna Felländer, Simone Daniela Langhans, Max Tegmark, and Francesco Fuso Nerini. 2020. The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Nature Communications 11 (1): 10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-14108-y.
von Lücken, Christian, and Ricardo Brunelli. 2008. Optimal Crops Selection Using Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms. Proceedings of the Twentieth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference: 1751–1756. https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v30i2.2212.
You, Jiaxuan, Xiaocheng Li, Melvin Low, David Lobell, and Stefano Ermon. 2017. Deep Gaussian Process for Crop Yield Prediction Based on Remote Sensing Data. In Proceedings of the Thirty-First AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI’17), 4559–4565. AAAI Press.
Zysman, John, and Martin Kenney. 2018. The Next Phase in the Digital Revolution. Communications of the ACM 61 (2): 54–63. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173550.
Acknowledgements
The content of this publication has not been approved by the United Nations and does not reflect the views of the United Nations or its officials or Member States.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Capasso, M., Umbrello, S. (2023). Big Tech Corporations and AI: A Social License to Operate and Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships in the Digital Age. In: Mazzi, F., Floridi, L. (eds) The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence for the Sustainable Development Goals . Philosophical Studies Series, vol 152. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21147-8_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21147-8_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-21146-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-21147-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)