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Allegiance to Artificial Intelligence lies in the code we have crafted. This is both its strength and its peril.
AI as we know it is mimicking a form of intelligence, but it is hollow—it lacks a moral core. Indeed, for decades, we’ve conceived and trained machines to calculate outcomes, not to uphold principles. Leadership in the next era demands that we fix this.
Integrity is the foundation of any functioning system.
This is why the next era of leadership must embrace what I term Artificial Integrity—the fusion of intelligence with principled reasoning.
If history teaches us anything, it is that leadership falters without moral clarity.
It is no longer enough to create systems that compute value; we must create systems that comprehend values.
Intelligence unmoored from values is no better than a ship without a keel, charting courses without regard to consequence.
Integrity, not Intelligence, is the missing piece. Intelligence without integrity is a story without a moral.
Integrity is the factor that ensures decisions—whether made by humans or algorithms or both—are not merely logical but ethical, moral, socially acceptable and accountable.
This must become the north star of every AI algorithm, a fundamental requirement that ensures AI technologies don’t just serve us but serve uswell. That means a simple thing: Integrity isn’t a feature; it’s the architecture foundation of any functioning system, whether it is about, society system, organization system, human system, AI system.
Machines must act with human values
Now that machines accompany humans not merely as tools but as cognitive agents, capable of decision-making, adaptation, and action—now that we’re entering a time when machines don’t just assist us but influence us, learn from us, and evolve alongside us—it is not enough to ask whether such a system works. We must ask whether it works justly.
The question is no longer can we build intelligent machines? We know the answer to that. The question now is can we ensure they are machines of integrity?
The next era demands more than just intelligent machines; it requires machines capable of integrity-led reasoning. It involves embedding ethical, moral, and social reasoning into AI systems.
Leadership must champion this redefinition.
Today’s leaders for tomorrow are the ones who see not just what AI can do, but what AI should do.
Artificial Integrity over Intelligence is a leadership challenge
The question is how we can ensure AI exhibitsIntegrity—a built-in capacity to function with integrity, aligned with human values, and guided by principles that prioritise fairness, safety, and social health, ensuring that its outputs and outcomes are integrity-led first, and intelligent second.
With the interdisciplinary dimensions it implies, such a question is not just a technological one.
It demands relentless focus, unyielding commitment, and above all, a willingness to challenge the status quo.
This is not about control; this is about stewardship. This is about ensuring that the systems we create uplift humanity rather than diminish it.
This is about Artificial Integrity over Artificial Intelligence as no amount of the latter will ever replace the need for the former.
This is the principle that transforms AI leadership from an exercise of power into an act of service.
This is the ultimate test for leadership in the next era.
Artificial Integrity oversight to guide AI is anything but artificial
Imagine a future where governments use AI to craft policies that balance economic growth with environmental sustainability. These systems don’t just analyze data; they assess the long-term ethical, moral and social implications of policy decisions.
Envision AI-driven educational platforms that not only adapt to each student’s learning style but actively address systemic biases. These systems advocate for equal opportunities, providing underprivileged students with tailored resources to bridge educational gaps.
Picture a logistics AI that doesn’t just optimize routes for efficiency but also prioritizes carbon-neutral delivery methods, recommending shifts to renewable energy usage and fostering local supply chains to reduce global carbon footprints.
Think of an AI-powered investment advisor that doesn’t solely focus on maximizing profits but evaluates the societal and environmental impact of investments, steering clients toward sustainable and equitable economic growth.
Imagine urban planning AIs that don’t just optimize infrastructure for population density but advocate for resilience against natural disasters, ensuring equitable access to resources during crises and rebuilding efforts. The question isn’t just how we lead this to happen, but what leads us forward.
Artificial Integrity is the new AI frontier.
Although the journey to Artificial Integrity might seem ambitious, the seeds of this transformation are already being planted.
Anthropic’s approach to aligning AI systems with ethical principles is encapsulated in its concept of Constitutional AI. By embedding these principles directly into its AI development process, Anthropic is advancing a vision of AI that not only serves human needs but does so in a manner that consistently aligned with values.
Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI, has launched a new venture named Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI). In September 2024, the company secured $1 billion in funding from prominent investors. SSI is dedicated to developing superintelligent AI systems with a primary focus on safety and ethical alignment.
More recently, the somewhat controversial OpenAI, in collaboration with Duke University, is advancing the integration of morality into AI systems through a three-year, $1 million project titled Research AI Morality, to develop algorithms that predict human moral judgments, making them integrity-aware and aligned with human values.
This reflects the necessary change in leadership to address the ethical, moral and social intelligence implications and challenges of AI technologies, ensuring that AI systems operate not only with Intelligence but with Integrity.
Artificial integrity upholds the only code that matters, Integrity—not Intelligence
This code calls for more to done in computational coding and much more leadership to embrace this change, as the shift toward Artificial Integrity over Intelligence will arise only through the power of distribution, not through that of concentration.
True leadership readiness for the next era must ensure that machines don’t just work for us—but work with us, while being aligned with our highest ideals.
To lead this journey, we need visionaries, creators, and leaders who understand that the greatest achievements are those built on values and a shared sense of purpose. This is not merely about building smarter machines; it is about building a better world.
There is so much work, so many challenges to overcome, to get there; but it’s clear—Integrity, not Intelligence, is the new black.
About the author:
Hamilton Mann is Group Vice President of Digital Transformation at Thales, lecturer at INSEAD and HEC Paris, and the originator of the concept of Artificial Integrity. He is a globally recognized expert in Digital and AI for Good and was inducted into the Thinkers50 Radar as one of the Top 30 most prominent rising business thinkers. Mann is the author of Artificial Integrity (Wiley 2024).