Data Ethics

It was March 25, 2000. A sea of red filled State Street, and Badger fans around the country were celebrating. The University of Wisconsin-Madison men’s basketball had just defeated Purdue in the NCAA tournament, securing a spot in the Final Four. 

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) improving our lives is enormous. In less than a quarter of a century, the Internet has grown from niche curiosity to a modern necessity for much of the world. Interpersonal communication has never been easier and social media has profoundly changed how people interact. This same technology that allows for a more efficient and communicative modern life also puts public and personal information at risk and creates new anxieties among the public and policymakers. These heightened concerns should not be a hinderance to the furtherance of technology, but rather, they should serve as a catalyst for necessary reflection and planning. To fully realize the benefits of these technologies, organizational goals must align with defined ethical values and the public interest.

As more enterprise firms and their customers start to question the use of data in analytics, research and artificial intelligence tools, INFORMS is offering an 18-point set of guidelines to ensure ethics in quantitative decision-making.

Scott Nestler, CAP, INFORMS member and professor with the University of Notre Dame, shares his perspective on a variety of ethical questions specific to data and analytics, and in particular, the role of the INFORMS Ethics Guidelines.

INFORMS members Scott Nestler, CAP, and David Hunt were named by the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business to its annual list of Office of the Dean Mission Awards, which honor faculty members for a specific research study that contributes to the common good. Nestler and Hunts “Using INFORMS Ethics Guidelines in the Classroom” describes how the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and its ethics guidelines can be used in the classroom. Their work stems from their involvement with the creation of the INFORMS Ethics in O.R. & Analytics Group, which is meant to bring awareness to issues of ethics in operations research and analytics.