Winning & the Ethics of AI

There's a lot to learn from sports - both good and bad - for businesses and organizations. More so in this booming AI era.

Protective equipment used in contemporary cricket encompasses specialized gear designed to shield players from potential harm. This includes helmets, gloves, pads, and guards, each carefully crafted to provide comprehensive protection during play. The use of such protective gears is regulated by the laws of modern day cricket. In the 1932-33 Test cricket series between England and Australia, played in Australia, the series gained notoriety in cricket history because the English team, captained by Douglas Jardine, introduced an aggressive bowling strategy called "Bodyline". It was an attempt by the Englishmen to contain the devastating batting of the Aussie great, Don Bradman. This strategy involved bowlers bowling the ball directly at the batsman's body, and resulted in many of the Australian players receiving numerous bruises and injuries. Batsmen of the day wore little protection by modern day standards. While the bodyline tactic succeeded in curtailing Australia's run rate, the series generated anger and resentment towards the English team within Australia and seriously damaged Anglo-Australian cricketing relations at the time.

Dick Fosbury was an American athlete - a high jumper. During his gold-medal-winning campaign at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, when jumping backwards off the “wrong foot” and arching his body over the bar, Fosbury started a revolution in high jump, a new technique that came to be known as the ‘Fosbury Flop’. With this, Dick Fosbury changed high jump forever. Fosbury was quite literally a game-changer, a true sporting pioneer.

Turning to volleyball, after leaping into the air and looking for all the world as if he’s about to hit the ball from the three-meter line, France’s Earvin N’Gapeth instead transforms himself into a setter, passing the ball to a free teammate while the block is doomed as the opposing player has already jumped. The technique, called as "The Fake Spike", has been a game-changer in volleyball, as opposition defenses have no idea whether to defend an oncoming spike or turn their attention to teammates waiting in the wings to receive a pass. While N'Gapeth invented the technique and first deployed it with his club side Modena in 2017, he has certainly been the player who has perfected the ruse - the ability to hide his audacious intentions in way that is so difficult to read.

Winning, eventually comes down to the finesse with which a capable and inspired team executes the defined strategy - inch by inch.

The 1999 movie "On Any Given Sunday", takes a behind-the-scenes look at the life-and-death struggles of modern-day gladiators and those who lead them. In his inspiring address to the players minutes before a game, Head Coach Tony D'Amato (played by the great actor, Al Pacino) says, "You find out life’s this game of inches. So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small -- I mean one-half a step too late, or too early, and you don’t quite make it. One-half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch, because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the difference between winning and losing! Between livin' and dyin'! I’ll tell you this: In any fight, it’s the guy who’s willing to die who’s gonna win that inch. And I know if I’m gonna have any life anymore, it’s because I’m still willin' to fight and die for that inch. Because that’s what livin' is, the six inches in front of your face. Now I can't make you do it. You've got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him. That's a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That's football guys, that's all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?"

When it comes to strategy and its effective execution for success, there is little doubt on who one would like to get inspired by, from the likes of Fosbury, N'Gapeth, and D'Amato on the one side, or from someone like a Douglas Jardine on the other. Jardine's strategy was not a display of sporting spirit in what is considered a gentleman's game. It was just not cricket.

The German sociologist Ulrich Beck once stated that ethics nowadays “plays the role of a bicycle brake on an intercontinental airplane”!

The current boom of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (AIS) is accompanied by constant loud calls for AI ethics, responsible AI and AI governance. A massive gap exists between ethical principles and values and their implementation in the practice of research, development and application of AIS.

The IEEE Global Initiative 2.0 on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems is a major initiative towards a new paradigm for AI governance that shifts from merely mitigating risks to proactively embedding a “Safety First Principle” and “Safety by Design” into AI’s design and lifecycle assessments, as well as in the development of generative AI models from the outset.

The focus and thrust is on navigating the delicate balance between the vast potential benefits and the inherent risks of AIS.

Performance and success in sports, organizations and AI Systems is not merely about the effective execution of a defined strategy. It is also about taking the vision of morals, ethics and socially responsible behaviors.