The Ethical Implications of Using Artificial Intelligence in Auditing
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The Ethical Implications of Using Artificial Intelligence in Auditing Ivy Munoko1 · Helen L. Brown‑Liburd1 · Miklos Vasarhelyi1 Received: 5 March 2019 / Accepted: 16 December 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Accounting firms are reporting the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their auditing and advisory functions, citing benefits such as time savings, faster data analysis, increased levels of accuracy, more in-depth insight into business processes, and enhanced client service. AI, an emerging technology that aims to mimic the cognitive skills and judgment of humans, promises competitive advantages to the adopter. As a result, all the Big 4 firms are reporting its use and their plans to continue with this innovation in areas such as audit planning risk assessments, tests of transactions, analytics, and the preparation of audit work-papers, among other uses. As the uses and benefits of AI continue to emerge within the auditing profession, there is a gradual awakening to the fact that unintended consequences may also arise. Thus, we heed to the call of numerous researchers to not only explore the benefits of AI but also investigate the ethical implications of the use of this emerging technology. By combining two futuristic ethical frameworks, we forecast the ethical implications of the use of AI in auditing, given its inherent features, nature, and intended functions. We provide a conceptual analysis of the practical ethical and social issues surrounding AI, using past studies as well as our inferences based on the reported use of the technology by auditing firms. Beyond the exploration of these issues, we also discuss the responsibility for the policy and governance of emerging technology. Keywords Artificial intelligence · Ethics · Audit
Introduction The ethics of emerging technology is evoking the interest of a broader population beyond ethicists. Academia, professionals, policymakers, regulators, and developers of these technologies are increasingly becoming aware of the existence of valid ethical concerns that stem from the use of these technologies (Wright and Schultz 2018; Aicardi et al. 2018). The term ‘emerging technologies’ itself has been the subject of much debate, with little consensus in the literature on what technologies qualify as emergent (Rotolo et al. 2015). Rotolo et al. (2015) define emerging technology as being of “radical novelty, relatively fast growth, prominent impact, uncertainty, and ambiguity.” Any technology that meets this * Helen L. Brown‑Liburd [email protected] Ivy Munoko [email protected] Miklos Vasarhelyi [email protected] 1
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, USA
definition would be of high risk due to the potentially significant impact of the uncertainties surrounding the technology. For example, emerging technologies experience rapid growth, which would make timely remediation of unanticipated risks unfeasible. With this backdrop, ethics researchers have sought the best approach for identifying
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