Strategies for Designing Responsibly within a Capitalist Enterprise

TL;DR

This paper advocates for integrating responsible AI design within capitalist enterprises by aligning ethical considerations with business goals to enhance real-world impact and practical adoption.

Contribution

It introduces a new framing of ethics and business as complementary, proposing ideation as a practical strategy for responsible AI design in capitalist contexts.

Findings

Aligning ethics with business objectives increases practical adoption.

Ideation facilitates ethically preferable and commercially viable solutions.

Moving beyond ethics vs. business dichotomy broadens responsible AI design options.

Abstract

Despite significant advances in responsible AI research, industry adoption remains limited, leaving many HCI contributions underutilized in practice. This position paper argues that current research often fails to account for the fundamental need for capitalist enterprises to create value. To achieve immediate real-world impact, responsible AI research must explore how to design responsibly within capitalism. We call for a move beyond the dichotomy of "ethics vs. business" toward a more productive framing of "ethics and business." We propose ideation as a practical design strategy for generating ethically preferable alternatives that also meet business objectives. By aligning ethics with enterprise realities, we expand the space of responsible design that can actually be built.