MIT Sloan Management Review Article on RAI Enables the Kind of Innovation That Matters

MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have assembled an international panel of AI experts that includes academics and practitioners to help us gain insights into how responsible artificial intelligence (RAI) is being implemented in organizations worldwide. RAI is often portrayed as creating friction that slows the pace of product development and stifles innovation. We wanted to understand whether the leaders charged with actually developing AI solutions have experienced this phenomenon. This month, we asked our panelists to react to the following provocation: RAI constrains AI-related innovation. The results were nearly unanimous, with 86% (19 out of 22) of our panelists disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with the statement. In fact, our experts overwhelmingly asserted that RAI actually enables AI-related growth and innovation — or at least the kind of innovation they want, although their rationales for why this is so differ.

We also conducted a global survey of more than 1,000 executives on the topic of RAI and found analogous support for the view that RAI efforts promote better business outcomes, including accelerated innovation. Nearly 40% of managers in companies with at least $100 million in annual revenues reported that they are already experiencing accelerated innovation as a result of their RAI efforts, while 64% of managers in organizations with mature RAI programs (RAI Leaders) described a similar boost.

About the Author

Elizabeth M. Renieris is guest editor for the MIT Sloan Management Review Responsible AI Big Idea program and founding director of the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab. David Kiron is editorial director of MIT Sloan Management Review. Steven D. Mills is a managing director, partner, and chief AI ethics officer at Boston Consulting Group.

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