96% Of People Consider Ethical And Responsible AI To Be Important

Undeniably, technology's ethical and responsible usage equates with a positive and sustainable future for the masses. With AI-powered technology playing a substantial role in our daily lives, it has become indispensable to consider its impact on society, the environment, and the upcoming generations.

According to a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey, 26.8% of Adults 18 years and older in the U.S. still need to take measures regarding their digital privacy. Similarly, 21.1%, 23.1%, and 28% of Gen-Z, Millennials, and Gen-X population need to strengthen their online confidentiality.

Ensuring that advanced technologies are developed, utilized, and appropriately maintained necessitates a collaborative effort from individuals, businesses, and governments. It encircles awareness of potential risks and advantages of sophisticated technologies, establishing transparency, fairness, and accountability while prioritizing the well-being of society.

I recently had a chance to speak with Linh Ho, the CMO of Zelros, an insurtech company utilizing AI to improve the insurance industry. Read the full interview here to learn about the importance of the ethical use of AI.

Gary Drenik: Tell me how technology and AI are being used by the insurance industry.

Linh Ho: The insurance industry has witnessed revolutionary changes in the last few years. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has cemented the path for further improvements such as improved efficiency, superior customer experience, and cost-efficiencies. Simply put, smarter, easier, and cheaper.

• Utility of AI in the Insurance Sector: A bounty of AI applications is presently deployed in the insurance sector, from distributions, claims processing to underwriting. Besides, AI can assist insurers in risk evaluation with increased accuracy by assessing sizable data amounts such as credit scores, historical customer data, 3rd party and zero-party data. Eventually, it enables the insurers to provide bespoke coverage to customers while pricing policies more reasonably. AI-backed technologies can detect and prevent fraud by examining data patterns and spotting suspicious activities. This has aided insurers in saving money by condensing the intensity of the deceptive claims they usually pay out.
• Significance of Claim Validation Software: A leading insurance company in the U.S. deployed intuitive claim validation software powered by AI and robotic process automation (RPA). Its core competence was to assess and validate claims to produce truthful loss reports. As a result, an improvement of around 99.99% was imbued in the claimed accuracy, whereas the operational efficiency and customer experience were enriched by up to 60% and 95%, respectively.
• The Biggest Challenge of AI Implementation: The most daunting part is that merely 1.33% of insurance companies have capitalized on AI according to Deloitte. It implies that a massive chunk of insurers is yet to harness the potential of AI to simplify their processes and service personalization. Indeed, there is a greater need for the insurance sector to adapt to the dynamic landscape of technological advancements, which is critical in the 21^st century.

Drenik: How can we know that this technology is being used responsibly and ethically?

Ho: AI has become widespread as over 56% of companies adopted it in at least one of their business processes in 2021. This is more relevant for emerging nations as the implementation of AI has hiked by 6% compared to 2020. From industries focused on talent acquisition, service optimization, biometric data capture in medical applications, to finance, judicial, and various other sectors.

Setting AI standards are pivotal in ensuring that management processes concerning cybersecurity, environmental sustainability, quality assurance and other factors remain consistent irrespective of the changing situations.

These standards define the institutional infrastructure required to construct and develop more sophisticated technologies and provide the safety protocols to do the same in a regulated manner. The AI standards and governance aim to eradicate the unfair practices and biases associated with the bigoted usage of technologies. To avoid unethical practices in the United States, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has picked five principles for creating and implementing these AI tools to protect the public in the AI era.

Zelros was created with similar goals a couple of years before this announcement was made. Designed to help insurers and complement their goals of helping and protecting policyholders from solutions that could harm them. With the introduction of this latest section, regulators, auditors, governance officers, and many other authorities can gauge any productized AI-based model’s performance over the complex sub-populations. This advancement has escalated the possibilities to identify hidden, till now unknown threats and potential unfair practices and behaviors.

Drenik: What does unethical use of AI and technology look like?

Ho: One of the most underlying ethical concerns with AI is unintentional bias. It happens when AI systems are designed mostly unintentionally in a way that learns on biased data or developed with unreasonable/subjective assumptions. It can make the AI system make discriminatory, unfair decisions which adversely impact specific groups of society.

Biases have the potential to perverse the long-existing social and gender-induced inequalities and support discrimination, specifically against marginalized communities.

Drenik: Can you please enlighten me on the benefits of using ethical, secure, and responsible technology in insurance?

Ho: Despite health insurance being of immeasurable significance, a survey by Zelros exhibited that 33% of people are deprived of an operative health insurance policy. Moreover, 48.8% of people either have one insurance policy or nothing at all.

The most alarming fact is that 66.9%, 53%, and 52.4% of the population older than 18, including Gen-Z, and Millennials, respectively, are not inclined towards buying or shifting to any type of insurance. Furthermore, 67.9 % of Gen-X individuals and 83.6% of Boomers also have a similar mindset. The prime reason behind this was the rising costs of purchasing insurance.

Using ethical, secure, and responsible technology in insurance can improve the customer experience, reduce the risk of bias, leading to faster and more accurate policy approvals that assist in making sure the policy is neither overprotected or underprotected.

Drenik: What does the future of ethical, secure, and responsible technology use look like with more regulation on the way?

Ho: With more regulations and human intervention, companies can ensure that their AI systems are transparent, explainable, and accountable and not perpetuate biases.

Organizations will need to get ahead and prioritize Responsible and Ethical AI programs before something causes reputational damage. It’s also just good practice. Programs can be designed for ongoing monitoring and retraining of the algorithm should there be deviations or patterns emerging that need special attention.

Drenik: Thank you, Linh, for your insights on what’s happening with ethical and responsible technology use.