Abstract

Virtual assistants are becoming a part of our daily life, from our homes to our work. Sometime we may not even know that the customer service agent that we were speaking with is a virtual assistant. These assistants continuously collect information from our interactions and learn many things about us. The information they gather over time is enormous. This chapter introduces the concept of ethics, discusses the ethical principles of virtual assistants, (Transparency, Justice & fairness, Non-maleficence, Responsibly and Privacy). Although there is limited regulation governing these virtual assistants, practical guidelines and recommendations are provided for designers and developers to understand the ethical implications when building a virtual assistant. In this chapter, we also discuss technology and learning techniques for virtual assistants and present examples on how to ensure ethical virtual assistant.

Highlights

  • Organizations are rapidly deploying Virtual Assistants aka bot technology [1] for automating communication, customer service, conversational commerce, product recommendation, education support, financial services, medical services, entertainment, social outreach and self-service tasks

  • Virtual assistants are built by humans using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and have wide ranging ethical implications which are important for organizations and consumers to understand

  • These standards should extend to virtual assistants and their creators who should design, build and maintain virtual assistants to ensure that their interactions with consumers foster honesty, loyalty, refrain from doing harm, or fraud and provide the right to privacy

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Summary

Introduction

Organizations are rapidly deploying Virtual Assistants aka bot technology [1] for automating communication, customer service, conversational commerce, product recommendation, education support, financial services, medical services, entertainment, social outreach and self-service tasks. They offer 24/7 service and fulfill the need of millennials [2] for real time responses. In subsequent sections of this chapter, we first define “What is ethics?” and discuss on ethical principles for virtual assistants. These principles provide key ethical considerations that designers and consumers should understand. We look into what is the probable future of super intelligent virtual assistants

Defining ethics
Ethical principles for virtual assistants
Transparency
Justice, fairness and equity
Non-maleficence
Responsibility and accountability
Privacy
Learning techniques of virtual assistants and ethical considerations
Commercial virtual assistant platforms
Mass market virtual assistants
Guidelines and legislations
What comes next
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