AI Ethics and Customer Care: Some Considerations from the Case of “Intelligent Sales”

Abstract

This note considers the topic of AI ethics as it relates to applied, industrial AI projects. In particular, it examines “intelligent sales,” a strategic management concept that envisions the enhancement of workflows within a sales organization with the use of Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI). This note examines common depictions of intelligent sales campaigns in management literature, identifying key topics in these discourses: data fusion, responsive customer care, automation, and streamlined delivery. We focus on ways in which intelligent sales is envisioned to enrich the customer-sales relationship through the use of Big Data and AI, surfacing ethical considerations around: training data and the use of AI outputs in everyday work practices. This paper contributes to discourses on the fairness, accountability, and transparency (FAccT*) of algorithmic systems by raising a number of emergent concerns in enterprise AI applications and in particular some considerations from the emergent management concept intelligent sales.