Artificial
intelligence (AI) is recognized to have the possibility to transform many
fields in our society and business environment (Stanford, 2016). In addition to
discovering the possible positive impacts, multidisciplinary research about
ethical concerns related to artificial intelligence should take place (Russell,
Dewey & Tegmark, 2016). Even though few ethical questions raised by the AI
are familiar from the tradition of information technology ethics, especially
from the famous PAPA model (Mason, 1986), all the questions are presented in a
novel light and with prior importance.

The rise of
AI ethics sets new questions for management studies. New ethical demands drive
organizations to introduce new practices, routines, and roles. The last few
years the AI ethics community has focused on the principle-level work resulting
manifold and primary documentation and updates, including IEEE Ethical Aligned
Design (2018), ACM Code of Ethics update (2018), AI Now Institute’s report
(2018) and An Ethical Framework for a Good AI Society (Floridi et al., 2018).
It is a fundamental task for the management studies to convert and execute
these findings to organizational practices.

A part of
management studies’ task is to answer who should take responsibility for the
ethical queries and customs. Although the ultimate responsibility is placed to
the management board and compliance department, liability carriers are likely
and should be found in other roles as well. An intriguing puzzler is whether
the ascending ethical demand can be fulfilled by the existing organizational
functions via effective retraining, or will new ethical roles emerge. The
unique nature of ethical issues brings complicated cultural and
diversity-related viewpoints to the debate.

A little
relating literature has been published about this specific demand of the
organizational roles disclosed by AI ethics. However, the long tradition of
compliance and business ethics literature, like roles and organizational
citizenship related to the environmental responsibility (Boiral & Paillé,
2012), and the realized managerial proposals of information technology ethics
(Jin et al., 2007) offer starting blocks for outlining the ethical roles for
the era of artificial intelligence. Due to the limited literature tackling the
call of AI ethics directly, the article by Wilson et al. (2017) “The jobs that
artificial intelligence will create” has been very impactful.

The
emerging roles and practices of AI ethics could build up to the boundaries
between programmers, designers, and compliance personnel. This research
analyzes the three principal categories and nine sub-roles proposed by Wilson
et al. (2017). As three comparison points, the research selects established
compliance roles, roles found in the environmental responsibility literature,
and the proposals of information technology ethics. The analysis is processed
in a matrix which answers how the proposals 1) are included in the existing or
proposed roles 2) suggest new ethical contents of the roles, and 3) are valid
and novel ideas to become new organizational roles.