AI, Privacy Breaches and Ethical Transgressions: An Integrative Theoretical Framework

Abstract

Despite the surge of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in management, the role of rapidly advancing AI on privacy breaches and ethical transgressions is elusive in the extant literature. In the present paper, we propose a theoretical framework integrating attributes of privacy breaches and transgressions in various types of AI tools, applications, and interventions. The proposed model illuminates on transgressions in three types of artificial intelligence: mechanical AI, thinking AI and feeling AI, considering varying levels of severity of impact on privacy. Building from the lens of the psychological contract, the theoretical framework explains the adoption of AI: acceptance, equivocation, reluctance, or rejection in operational, justice, and governance transgressions within each type of AI. By highlighting the challenges embedded in the adoption of AI and a need to safeguard privacy in organizations, our theory provides research and managerial insights, the future scope of scientific scholarship, and a roadmap to the contemporary business ecosystem to seek an in-depth understanding of intertwined aspects of AI, privacy breaches and transgressions