This article was first published in Harvard Business Review and is available via subscription.
Increasingly, values such as safety, dignity, fairness, meritocracy, harmlessness, and helpfulness are becoming key differentiators when marketing AI products and services. Where once companies competed on speed, scalability, and accuracy, today they are promoting how well their products embody human values. However, creating such products is not without its challenges.
Jacob Abernethy, François Candelon, Theodoros Evgeniou, Abhishek Gupta, and Yves Lostanlen identify these challenges, grouping them into six categories: defining values for the product, writing the values into the program, assessing the tradeoffs, aligning partners’ values, ensuring human feedback, and preparing for surprises. As customers—and society—expect AI products to align with human values, companies must recognize the risks and the opportunities for product differentiation and embrace new practices to stay ahead.