Keywords

Key Take-Aways

  • Some companies use AI for the social good. “AI for the social good” projects benefit others without directly improving the company’s bottom line. Some companies undertake such projects.

  • The “social good” projects in our study were of two types. Some employed advanced analytics to learn about, and inform individuals of, risks they faced or ways they could improve their lives. Others provided information to public bodies that enabled them to improve their planning efforts or efficiency.

  • Blended motivations. The research suggested that companies are cognizant both of the need to attend to moral values and to the interests of a broad set of stakeholders, and of the fact that doing so can build trust and contribute to the company’s own well-being.

  • What are the limits? These efforts raise interesting questions about companies’ moral obligation to pursue the public good, the limits of this obligation, and how companies will behave when the public and corporate good diverge. Privately-held corporations with socially conscious employees and/or CEO’s appear more likely to pursue the social good even when doing so might work, to some extent, against the company’s interest.

As companies grapple with the need to go “beyond compliance” in their data ethics practices, some of them have embraced opportunities to use advanced analytics for the social good. These efforts are distinguished from other advanced analytics and AI projects in that they seek to advance the public interest without directly benefiting the company’s own bottom line (although they may generate longer-term reputational benefits). Several interviewees described projects of this type. As one study participant put it: “there's something intuitive in the idea that this is still everybody's data and that it should somehow and someway benefit everybody.” (Interviewee #20). Efforts to promote the social good exemplify the oft-repeated refrain among our interviewees that, in going beyond compliance, their companies are trying to do “the right thing” and not merely embracing morally good options because they enhance customer or public trust, or otherwise advance their business interests.

These “data analytics for the social good” efforts seem to fall into two main baskets. First, advanced analytics and AI may allow companies to warn individuals of risks or to help them discover opportunities to improve their lives. A well-known and controversial example of this sort is Facebook’s suicide prevention program. Facebook used advanced analytics and AI to identify, based on a user’s activity, whether that person was potentially suicidal. In March 2017, the company began scanning users’ activity for pre-suicidal signals, and then sharing with the user information about how to obtain support, or, in some cases, notifying emergency responders.Footnote 1 In the second category of “social good” projects, companies produce socially valuable information for municipalities or other public bodies to improve their planning or efficiency. Our interviews reveal a number of such examples, such as utilizing location data to improve evacuation planning during natural disasters, track infectious diseases, or relieve traffic congestion in cities.

Companies’ involvement in these “social good” efforts raise a series of important questions. To what extent are these efforts motivated by the companies’ long-term interest in gaining the trust of customers or the public? Will companies continue the efforts at such time as promoting the social good no longer benefits the company? How do such initiatives get started within companies, and how can they be sustained? Finally, are companies morally obligated to try to “do the right thing” over and above respecting certain legal constraints as they pursue their business interests? These questions have long been at the heart of debates about corporate social responsibility.Footnote 2

The Business Roundtable made headlines in August 2019 when it stated that companies should not focus primarily on shareholder value, but instead should embrace a broader commitment to all stakeholders. Alex Gorsky, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Johnson and Johnson, said about the statement: “It affirms the essential role corporations can play in improving our society when CEOs are truly committed to meeting the needs of all stakeholders” (Business Roundtable 2019). At a minimum, this suggests that moral values and regard for the interests of a broad set of affected individuals (and not just shareholder or executive self-interest bounded only by legal compliance) should inform corporate decision-making in an integrated way. But what are the limits of this commitment, in principle and in practice?Footnote 3

Consider the competing motivations driving many corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Philanthropy and other ways of connecting with the community that go beyond core business services or products may be motivated by a desire to promote the social good. But they are often also motivated by a company’s own interest in enhancing its reputation. What might it mean for a company to pursue CSR in the spirit of the Business Roundtable statement? Rangan et al. have argued that although an effective and appropriate CSR program must reflect a company’s overall “business purpose and values,” it should avoid being consciously directed by narrow business aims. Improved business outcomes “should be spillover, not their reason for being:”

Some [CSR] initiatives indeed create shared value; some, though intended to do so, create more value for society than for the firm; and some are intended to create value primarily for society. Yet all have one thing in common: They are aligned with the companies’ business purpose, the values of the companies’ important stakeholders, and the needs of the communities in which the companies operate. These companies, of course, stand in stark contrast to those that are focused solely on creating value for their shareholders. (Rangan, et al. 2015)

Our study reinforces the thought that, for many practitioners, “doing the right thing” is typically meant in this spirit. Companies are cognizant of the need to attend to moral values and to the interests of a broad set of stakeholders, and they may welcome opportunities to pursue the social good independent of any immediate business aim. But the pursuit of the social good cannot be entirely divorced from the company’s business purpose. Doing “the right thing,” then, typically refers to the company’s conscious willingness to go beyond legal compliance into less certain moral territory, to try to live up to what a responsible company is expected to do, and to welcome opportunities where its business purpose and values coincide with the social good. But the key practical question that practitioners must address is not “what’s the right thing to do” in some idealized sense, but rather “how can a company be a responsible member of society,” especially in uncertain terrain.

This idea of the motivation for, and limits of, pursuing the social good for its own sake is reflected in the ambiguities in many study participants’ comments on such efforts. Take these examples from two interviewees and a recent report:

To achieve loyalty and trust from users while constantly evolving and offering new products and services, companies must do more than implement good data practices—they must build a culture of privacy and security that embeds and formalizes values of digital dignity and data stewardship and contributes to the social good. (de Mooy and Yuen 2016)

Yes, we definitely have [talked publicly about social good projects]. It ranges from … press releases that we have done where we've talked about it or in conjunction with a university or a city or things of that nature. When I speak externally, I always talk about it if the forum presents itself because I think it shows how you can build a program and try to enhance your reputation as a company that cares for data and you develop that trust factor or that transparency factor with the external environment, whether it's your customers or regulators or the press or the media or whoever is part of the audience. (Interviewee #9)

I do see us as a single corporate culture about putting our customers first and doing the right thing. And giving back to the community and being trustworthy. (Interviewee #20)

These passages highlight the key question of motivation and the limiting case where a company’s interest and the social good diverge.

Our study offers some clues about how companies may remain committed to the social good even at some cost to business interests. A lot depends on individuals within the company themselves remaining committed to the projects and offering their time, effort, and leadership. Sometimes this can work in a bottom-up fashion: “I would say it usually starts with individual teams, individual people. And then, they escalate it and say, ‘We think that we should do this’... And then, obviously, that goes up the chain... It started from the bottom up.” (Interviewee #14). This in turn suggests that companies that want to remain committed to the social good have reason to bring in employees who will be sensitive to moral issues or other stakeholder concerns. “[H]ire individuals with a background or experience in... sociology, ethics, and/or human subject research.... Distributing this talent throughout the organization will embed a value of data stewardship throughout the decision-making and review processes” (de Mooy and Yuen 2016, at 17).

But more commonly companies that pursue the social good are able to maintain that stance because of the commitment of their CEO, which in turn informs the corporate culture. Study participants often invoked the influence of leadership on the way the whole company functions.

I've heard our CEO bemoan the fact that some of the really large data companies internationally have done virtually nothing to help with their data, and [the CEO] believes that's profoundly wrong. (Interviewee #20)

I don't know why some companies care about things they're not legally required to care about,. . . As I looked inside of [company], at the time, there was a philosophy in the company around responsibility and doing the right thing. It changed, but it was there. And kind of part of DNA of the company. . . . We had an incredibly strong CEO at the time that cared about responsible practices and going above and beyond. We had an even stronger general counsel. . . I almost think that it comes down to just this perfect storm of the company's history and philosophy around social responsibility. (Interviewee #2)

It perhaps goes without saying that privately held companies have even more flexibility to reflect the values of the owner or other leadership.

In summary, then, companies have long recognized claims of corporate social responsibility that require going beyond compliance. As companies enter the world of data ethics, they will encounter many opportunities to benefit their communities through advanced analytics and AI. Some companies are already looking for these opportunities and they recognize that, in competitive fields where customer and public trust is vital, pursuing the social good often coincides with their long-term interests. Whether most companies will integrate moral values and the broader interests of the public into their decision-making for their own sake, and not because of the coincidence of morality and interest, remains an open question.