Mozilla’s Mark Surman on 3 ways CEOs can build trust in AI

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. 

Modern CEO has reported on disparate levels of enthusiasm for AI between corporate leaders and the general public. More worrying, there’s an emerging trust gap in the workplace, with only 27% of workers in the U.S. saying they “trust their employers to use AI responsibly,” according to one survey.  

It’s not too late for CEOs to win employees’ trust on AI, says Mark Surman, president of Mozilla, known for its Firefox web browser and its long-standing support of open-source technologies. Indeed, Surman’s advice for CEOs is drawn from open-source principles and Mozilla’s experiences seeking to build a more trustworthy internet. Here’s his counsel. 

1. Empower your team.  

“If you want to do right by your employees, have them be involved in how you reshape and rebuild the company,” Surman says. “Give them ways to create and learn and have agency over how [AI] is used.”  

Surman discourages companies from thinking of AI strictly as a productivity tool or a way to track workers’ keystrokes so machines can take over their tasks. (Indeed, research suggests that if employees know they are being mined for their data, they may withhold information.) Surman commends the efforts of Karim Lakhani, a Harvard Business School professor whose research suggests that AI-human collaboration can be potent and will require companies to reimagine the way organizations are structured and led.  

2. Build the right guardrails. 

In the same way that the internet brought new safety issues that required cybersecurity experts, AI governance is becoming a specialty. Mozilla Ventures has invested in AI governance companies such as Fiddler AI and Credo AI, which Surman feels are leading the way in helping companies and nonprofits with oversight and control of their agents. 

“The CEO totally has to be on top of modernizing safety and security” in the age of AI, he says. “You can lean on people who are really experienced at building the guardrails and rules for how AI should work at your company.” 

3. Be worthy of trust.  

“The consequences of being untrustworthy and ignoring accountability are through the roof,” Surman says. While he is excited about the creativity that responsible AI can unleash, he also acknowledges that AI can create slop and error-filled content that will erode trust in brands and institutions: “If trust isn’t something that you think about as a company, you are going to struggle in a world where people are more skeptical than ever about whether something is reliable.” 

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