Jon in the Hot Seat: AI ethics

“The key question isn’t ‘What can AI do?’ but ‘What should AI do?’ ” 
– John C. Havens

Today, Advantage President & CEO Jonathan Hodge is featured on Andy Storch‘s Talent Development Hot Seat podcast to further explore a topic close to his heart: Ethical guidelines for using generative artificial intelligence in learning & development.

The podcast expands on thoughts Jon originally expressed in a LinkedIn article last November to ignite a discussion the learning & development community and to share how we at Advantage are grappling with ethical challenges of generative AI in an age of unregulated experimentation that echoes the lawlessness and gold rush days of the wild west.

“The best organizations are out in front and embracing it, but we as individuals need to be embracing it and using it and thinking about how we’re using it fairly and ethically,” he said on the podcast.

One of the stories he shared involved our own short-lived experiment to use AI at his suggestion to generate early drafts (which we would also edit carefully) for Talent Development Tuesday, a process we embraced for a few weeks in the spirit of efficiency. When our engagement rates went down, we realized using AI was weakening our human connection, and we needed to return to creating it in the moment from the heart.

“We don’t use it anymore, we put it to bed, sent it out into the pasture. But my premise was because that was very intentionally the soul of our marketing body here at this organization, it lost its soul, it lost its spirit,” he said.

We were actually glad to see statistics bear out what our readers sensed and the Velveteen Rabbit learned: It’s the human touch and our experience that makes us real.

Listen to the full episode here.

How are you exploring the fair and ethical use of generative AI in your organization? Join the conversation!

One great thing for 02.25.25 – CHRO Principles: Responsible Use of AI in Organizations (reprise)