Company Values
ZDNET: How do you define ethical AI, and why is it critical for businesses today?
Kiran Minnasandram: Ethical AI not only complies with the law but is also aligned with the value we hold dear at Wipro. Everything we do is rooted in four pillars. AI must be aligned with our values around the individual (privacy and dignity), society (fairness, transparency, and human agency), and the environment. The fourth pillar is technical robustness that encompasses legal compliance, safety, and robustness.
AI Adoption and Sustainability
ZDNET: How does AI adoption impact corporate sustainability goals, both positively and negatively?
Kiran Minnasandram: AI adoption has and will have a significant impact on corporate sustainability goals. On the positive side, AI can enhance operational efficiency by optimizing supply chains and improving resource management through more precise monitoring of energy and carbon consumption, as well as improving data collection processes for regulatory reporting.
Environmental Impact
ZDNET: How should enterprises balance the drive for AI innovation with environmental responsibility?
Kiran Minnasandram: As a starting point, enterprises will need to establish clear policies, principles, and guidelines on the sustainable use of AI. This creates a baseline for decisions around AI innovation and enables teams to make the right choices around the type of AI infrastructure, models, and algorithms they will adopt. Additionally, enterprises need to establish systems to effectively track, measure, and monitor environmental impact from AI usage and demand this from their service providers.
Biggest Misconception
ZDNET: What are the biggest misconceptions about AI ethics and sustainability, and how can businesses overcome them?
Kiran Minnasandram: The biggest misconception is that it is challenging to bring innovation and responsibility together. The reality is that responsible AI is the key to unlocking AI progress as it provides long-term sustainable innovation.
Leveraging the Cloud
ZDNET: How can cloud infrastructure be leveraged to embed ethical considerations into AI development?
Kiran Minnasandram: Cloud infrastructure offers powerful tools to help embed ethical considerations into AI development. Built-in AI ethics toolkits can support bias detection and fairness testing by identifying imbalances in training data and models. Cloud platforms also offer diversity-aware training tools to help ensure datasets are representative and inclusive, which is critical for developing responsible AI systems.
Measuring Sustainability
ZDNET: Why do some organizations struggle to measure AI’s sustainability impact, and how can cloud-based tools help?
Kiran Minnasandram: Many organizations struggle to measure AI’s sustainability impact due to the absence of standard metrics. Without a universal framework to quantify environmental effects, it becomes difficult to benchmark progress or compare across initiatives. Cloud-based tools can help bridge this gap by offering customizable dashboards and models that track carbon output across the AI lifecycle, from development through deployment.
Conducting AI Impact Assessments
ZDNET: What governance strategies should enterprises implement to ensure responsible AI usage?
Kiran Minnasandram: The most important thing is to have a governance framework. Some organizations may have a separate AI governance structure, while others (like ours) have embedded it within our existing governance construct. It is very important to involve every corner of the organization. AI impact assessments are useful tools to embed legal protection, privacy, and robustness in the deployment of AI from the inception stage.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the interview with Kiran Minnasandram, VP and CTO of Wipro FullStride Cloud, highlights the importance of ethical AI and sustainability in the development and deployment of AI systems. The company values at Wipro, such as privacy, dignity, fairness, transparency, and human agency, serve as a foundation for responsible AI development. The interview also emphasizes the need for enterprises to establish clear policies, principles, and guidelines on the sustainable use of AI and to track, measure, and monitor environmental impact from AI usage.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What are the biggest misconceptions about AI ethics and sustainability?
A: The biggest misconception is that it is challenging to bring innovation and responsibility together. The reality is that responsible AI is the key to unlocking AI progress as it provides long-term sustainable innovation.
Q: How can cloud infrastructure be leveraged to embed ethical considerations into AI development?
A: Cloud infrastructure offers powerful tools to help embed ethical considerations into AI development. Built-in AI ethics toolkits can support bias detection and fairness testing by identifying imbalances in training data and models.
Q: Why do some organizations struggle to measure AI’s sustainability impact?
A: Many organizations struggle to measure AI’s sustainability impact due to the absence of standard metrics. Without a universal framework to quantify environmental effects, it becomes difficult to benchmark progress or compare across initiatives.
Q: What governance strategies should enterprises implement to ensure responsible AI usage?
A: The most important thing is to have a governance framework. Some organizations may have a separate AI governance structure, while others (like ours) have embedded it within our existing governance construct.
