Today, anyone can access and produce AI-generated text through generative conversational AI systems like ChatGPT. The discussion around ChatGPT is often focused on specific issues such as authorship. A recent paper in International Journal of Information Management explores the ethical issues of ChatGPT and presents a systematic review of the benefits and concerns, including responsibility, inclusion, social cohesion, autonomy, safety, bias, accountability, and impact on the environment
In the paper, Bernd Carsten Stahl and Damian Eke are looking at ChatGPT through the lens of established approaches for analysing ethics of emerging technologies to analyse ChatGPT’s capabilities to produce humanlike text and interact with the user. According to the authors, ChatGPT raises ethical concerns related to social justice, individual autonomy and cultural identity. But there are also environmental issues, where processing large amounts of data requires large amounts of energy that needs to be produced somehow.
According to the authors, their finding are consistent with emerging research and industry priorities on ethics of generative AI. Ethical concerns in terms of responsibility, inclusion, social cohesion, autonomy, safety, bias, accountability, environmental impact requires efforts. In the paper, Bernd Stahl and Damian Eke call for stakeholder engagement, holistic approaches in the development and applications and interventions by policymakers.
Want to know more? Read the paper: Bernd Carsten Stahl, Damian Eke, The ethics of ChatGPT – Exploring the ethical issues of an emerging technology, International Journal of Information Management, Volume 74, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2023.102700
