A Case Study in Acceleration AI Ethics: The TELUS GenAI Conversational Agent

Abstract: Acceleration ethics addresses the tension between innovation and safety in artificial intelligence. The acceleration argument is that risks raised by innovation should be answered with still more innovating. This paper summarizes the theoretical position, and then shows how acceleration ethics works in a real case. To begin, the paper summarizes acceleration ethics as composed of five elements: innovation solves innovation problems, innovation is intrinsically valuable, the unknown is encouraging, governance is decentralized, ethics is embedded. Subsequently, the paper illustrates the acceleration framework with a use-case, a generative artificial intelligence language tool developed by the Canadian telecommunications company Telus. While the purity of theoretical positions is blurred by real-world ambiguities, the Telus experience indicates that acceleration AI ethics is a way of maximizing social responsibility through innovation, as opposed to sacrificing social responsibility for innovation, or sacrificing innovation for social responsibility.