Better questions about generative AI
Four scholars share critical questions leaders should ask about generative AI, from concerns about bias to existential considerations about human values
Annalyn Kurtz
Andrew Blau
Across the business landscape, there’s significant focus right now on how to pose better questions to generative AI, but many leaders are also trying to ask better questions about the technology—to reflect on the potential implications it could have for their organizations and the humans using it.
At the Thinkers50 conference in London, an event celebrating achievements in business and leadership research, we asked several leading management scholars: What better questions should we all be asking about generative AI?
From concerns about bias to the trade-offs between productivity and overwork, here’s how four of those scholars summed up the ethical, societal, and existential considerations that are often overlooked in the rush to adopt exciting, new technologies. Their perspectives encourage a deeper examination of how AI tools align with broader human values and the future we all aspire to create.
Stephanie Creary, University of Pennsylvania
Stephanie Creary, an assistant professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, studies organizational behavior, including questions about diversity, identity, and overwork, among other topics.
Q: How can we balance AI adoption with employee well-being?
A: There’s pretty much a double-edged sword to everything in life, right? There’s the good and the bad, and the pros and the cons. And, certainly, when we think about generative AI and all these tools, are they designed to help us be more efficient, to get knowledge faster, to embed that into our work more quickly? Yes. And so there are great advantages to that. But we’re using words like ‘efficient,’ ‘faster,’ and ‘more.’ And words like ‘efficient,’ ‘faster,’ and ‘more’ make us actually do more, and we don’t always calibrate our energy, our time, to deal with these advances.
I do worry about how expectations of ourselves and of us in our environments will exceed the cognitive capacity and the physical capacity that we have to do work. That hasn’t changed. Doing more work hasn’t all of a sudden made us superhuman. We still have limitations cognitively, emotionally, and physically. So I think we need to start having conversations around working well, even though the demands placed upon us are increasing.
That said, I think there’s great potential in generative AI to produce higher-quality products. It’s just, how can we do that without sacrificing ourselves cognitively, emotionally, and physically in the process? I think this is the next set of questions we have to listen to.
Sinan Aral, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sinan Aral, a professor of management, information technology, marketing, and data science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, directs a research group focused on generative AI and decentralization.
Q: What skills will new workers need in an AI world?
A: The advice I do give to young people is that, in a world in which we are building a machine that is very, very good at answering questions, the scarce and complementary human skill is asking good questions. … The questions are about our values. The questions are about our possibilities. The questions are not so easy to glean just from an extension of what’s been done in the past because it is a wide-open set of possibilities. …
They’re questions about what our future could be. … What is the most beautiful world we could imagine tomorrow? And every other question is a sub-question of that and how we get there.
Asking those questions in a way that is meaningful is the big challenge.
Poornima Luthra, Copenhagen Business School
Poornima Luthra, an associate professor at Copenhagen Business School, is the author of The Art of Active Allyship, which examines seven behaviors to nurture inclusion in the workplace.
Q: What behaviors can help counter AI bias?
A: When we think about leadership as all of us being a leader, then how do we step up to be able to nurture those inclusive spaces using the concept of active allyship? And a few of [those behaviors] really apply here when we think about generative AI. The No. 1, the first behavior is actually deep curiosity, really being deeply curious about what is missing. Whose voice is missing? How is someone who’s different from myself, are they represented in what generative AI is providing us, in the responses that we’re getting? Is that perspective representative of the global majority? The Global South? The underrepresented, the underrecognized, the underestimated: Are those voices really there? So, deeply being curious.
The second is honest introspection. And that is about examining bias—bias in the way we ask questions as well. Sometimes we can ask questions in a particular way and, of course, that means that you’ll get a certain type of response. … But if we tweak the words, could we get a more inclusive response? Would that then trigger the generative AI system to be able to provide us with more nuance and more representation in the responses we get? So I think [we need] that honest introspection around our own questions but then, of course, looking at the responses we get and saying, “Well, where does bias actually lie in what is being provided to us?”
Pia Lauritzen, Qvest
Pia Lauritzen, a trained philosopher and founder and CEO of Qvest, an employee engagement technology company based in Denmark, studies the philosophy behind questions and how they shape human thinking and knowledge.
Q: What questions shouldn’t be left to AI?
A: From a philosophical perspective, there are questions that we should never leave to a bot. Typically, I talk about the three big E’s. The existential questions: Who am I? What does it even mean to be one person and another person? The ethical questions: How should I behave? How do I do what’s good not only for myself but for the people around me and for the world at large? And the epistemological questions: How do we know, and what do we know? And how do we deal with all the things that we don’t know? … I think it becomes extremely important that we practice asking these kind of questions and recognizing this is a question that we need to discuss with each other and not with a bot.
To view the videos, visit www.deloitte.com/insights/ai-better-questions. For more information about the Thinkers50 Radar list, visit Thinkers50.com/radar-2024.
Thinkers50-recognized business thinkers explore generative AI’s benefits and ethical challenges
Stephanie Creary, Poornima Luthra, and Pia Lauritzen were honored in the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2023, a list produced in collaboration with Deloitte US spotlighting business and management thinkers whose ideas are likely to shape the future.
In collaboration with Deloitte Insights, Thinkers50 recently conducted a pulse check of 48 Radar honorees about their generative AI usage to get a sense of how the technology is impacting the work of business and management thinkers. Several shared their concerns about bias, ethics, intellectual property, and plagiarism, but they also marveled at its speed, note-taking abilities, and value as a brainstorming buddy. Among these respondents, more than half were frequent users, with 28 reporting they had used generative AI tools at least once a day in their last month of work. Only one person said they had not used a generative tool in the prior month.
The respondents’ use of generative AI tools highlights the technology’s utility in day-to-day work, even as these thinkers also question its limitations.
The views and opinions expressed by interview subjects are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte. These interviews provide general information only and are not intended to constitute advice or services of any kind.