GitHub Copilot: Great Promises Tempered by Looming Ethical Shadows

Parul Gupta

Product #:W34830

Supplier:MDI/Ivey

Discipline:General Management

Setting:2023

Details:Case (PDF) • 12 pages • 2024-02-01

Subjects:

Management

Industries:

Information technology and telecom sector

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$9.71

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While Microsoft and its allies received immense praise from industry insiders for creating GitHub Copilot, a tool that greatly improved programming accessibility, it faced scrutiny from regulators and ethicists shortly after its launch. A class action suit was filed against them for using the publicly available codes to develop Copilot without informed consent. Ethicists raised concerns about their commitment to ethical and responsible innovation. While Microsoft and allies were being questioned they and several other big technology firms terminated a large numbers of AI ethics personnel. This raised several concerns about ethical and legal oversights in design, development, and deployment of AI-powered innovations like GitHub Copilot.

Learning Objectives

This case can be used in core and elective courses such as; Business Ethics, Design for responsible innovation, AI ethics and Legal and Ethical Aspects of technology innovations. By working through the case and assignment questions, students will have the opportunity to do the following:

Better understand the the concept of “Responsible Innovation."
Examine technology innovations from the lens of consequentialism and non-consequentialism ethics.
Comprehend ethical concerns related to design, development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence Systems in Business.
Learn how technology firms can integrate ethics in the development process of truly responsible innovation.