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Data with Dignity: Equity and AI-based Resource Allocation

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This article is based on a presentation at the Fall 2023 Accounting & Finance Forum on Data with Dignity by Chad Dau, Associate Vice President – Decision Analytics and Optimization at Lilly.

AI-driven resource allocation is quickly becoming one of the most common applications of artificial intelligence in the business world, and for good reason. Leveraging data to make decisions about how resources are applied is tremendously attractive for organizations like pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, that are continually looking for opportunities to make efficiency gains and optimize costs.

But AI-driven decision making isn’t exclusively upside, says Chad Dau, Associate Vice President of Decision Analytics and Optimization at Lilly. Introducing AI into decision-making processes poses an entirely new set of risks, and organizations may not be aware of the growing challenges for responsible use of AI.

“AI modeling tends to focus on short-term impacts and proximal drivers, and leaves out the complexity of interactions between decision makers,” says Dau. “When those things are ignored, you can build biases into your models that affect people’s lives and health.”

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Fixing an Internet of Broken Things: Approaches to Cybersecurity & AI Governance

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This article is based on a presentation at the Fall 2023 Accounting & Finance Forum on Data with Dignity by Scott Shakelford, the Provost Professor of Business Law and Ethics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, Director for IU’s Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, and Executive Director of the Ostrom Workshop.

November 2, 1988 may not be a date you’ve assigned significance to. But it served as a key turning point in the history of the Internet and cybersecurity: the first DDoS attack.

This high-profile cybercrime, during which a graduate student at Cornell flooded a server with Internet traffic and inadvertently immobilized about 6,000 computers, caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. And despite being accidental (it was meant to be a research project), the first DDoS attack nonetheless changed the landscape for cybersecurity and AI governance, says Scott Shackelford, a professor of business law and ethics for the Kelley School of Business, who also serves as the director for IU’s Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research.

From that case, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was established, setting a precedent that what happens in the cyber world has real-life consequences. (more…)

How Businesses are Embracing AI: The Risk Management Readiness Gap

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This article is based on a presentation at the Fall 2023 Institute of Business Analytics Conference on Generative AI and Cybersecurity: Navigating the New Era of Threats and Safeguards by Alie Fordyce, a product policy manager at Robust Intelligence.

If you ask Alie Fordyce, product policy manager for Robust Intelligence, there’s a readiness gap in artificial intelligence risk management practices for most businesses today. Even mature organizations are still working to tailor their AI risk management practices to anticipate the vulnerabilities inherent to generative AI.

“Even the largest, most forward-thinking companies are struggling to manage AI risk, regardless of their history or use cases,” says Fordyce, a product policy manager for Robust Intelligence, a startup based in San Francisco that was born out of a decade of research from Harvard University. Robust Intelligence is focused on helping companies manage the safety and security risks inherent to AI while harnessing the promise of the technology.

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Embracing Human Judgment in Model-Driven Decisions

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This article is based on a presentation at IBA’s Fall 2023 Accounting and Finance Forum: Data with Dignity by Amit Grover, Director of Finance Data Sciences at Discover Financial Services at the time of this presentation.

In just five short years, artificial intelligence has revolutionized the accounting industry. In his role leading the finance and data sciences teams at Discover, Amit Grover has experienced that remarkable transformation firsthand.

Several key drivers have reshaped finance, says Grover, who leads the development and implementation of machine learning models that drive Discover’s business forecasts, allowances for loan losses and leases, and decisions on capital adequacy.

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Using Search Data to Anticipate and Increase Customer Activity

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This article is based on a presentation at IBA’s Spring 2024 Data Jam: Decoding Consumer Analytics by Steven Hines, Manager and SEM Lead at Deloitte.

Every day, two billion potential purchasers pick up their phones and open Google to search for goods and services or to have a question answered. “Can I buy the product I just saw a commercial for?” “What’s the score for the IU vs. Michigan State basketball game?”

Retailers can leverage these searched questions to better understand who’s searching for their brand and why they’re searching, explains Steven Hines, a manager and search engine marketing (SEM) leader at the global consulting firm Deloitte.

“We can use tools, including something as simple as Google Trends, to better understand and identify our audience behavior,” says Hines. “What are they interested in? How can we better reach and message the people that we want to convert to not only a one-time purchaser, but a loyal, lifelong customer and brand advocate?”

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Redesigning Productivity in the Age of Cognitive Acceleration

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This article is based on a presentation at IBA’s Fall 2023 Analytics Conference on Generative AI & Cybersecurity: Navigating the New Era of Threats and Safeguards by Mark Szarka, who was a Manager with Deloitte Strategy & Analytics at the time of this presentation.

As the impact of AI  on our individual task-based work and productivity continues to accelerate, AI industry leaders like Mark Szarka are thinking more broadly about how to build more sophisticated reasoning into the applications to drive value.

“If we focus not just on units of work, but entire outcomes—whether it’s a marketing campaign or a growth strategy that we’re presenting to a Fortune 500 company—we can leverage the reasoning elements of language models in concert with what we call cognitive design,” says Szarka, an AI Strategy leader at Deloitte. “Then, we can breathe life into data through the next wave of systems.”

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Assessing the Vulnerabilities of the Open-Source AI Landscape: A Large-Scale Analysis of the Hugging Face Platform

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This article is based on a presentation at IBA’s Fall 2023 Analytics Conference on Generative AI & Cybersecurity by Ben Lazarine, Kelley Doctoral Student and part of Kelley’s Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (DSAIL). 

In the past few years, access to artificial intelligence models has been democratized as the AI community has leveraged open-source platforms. While this transition has created a great deal of AI development and adoption because it’s easy to access and share models, it’s also introduced new risks.

One of the most popular open-source platforms used by developers is Hugging Face, which allows developers to post and share pre-trained AI models for any number of tasks. Ben Lazarine, a PhD student who works in Kelley’s Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (DSAIL), explains how Hugging Face works: if a user trains a model to do a natural language processing (NLP) task, they could post it on Hugging Face to easily facilitate others’ use of the model in their own web applications.

On Hugging Face, users can leverage features like the model card, which provides information about a particular model, allows users to see how popular a model is, and shows the usage rate of the model. The files and versions sections also allow users to look “under the hood” of the model.

“While these features are useful, it’s important to note that Hugging Face doesn’t actually provide the source code on their own platform that was used to develop and train the models,” Lazarine says. “This makes it difficult to find the vulnerabilities of these models by looking at Hugging Face alone.”

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Panel Discusses Best Practices in Cybersecurity Data Sharing and Governance  

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This article is based on a panel discussion at IBA’s Fall 2022 Analytics Conference on Cybersecurity. This panel featured comments from Wayne Selk, Executive Director of CompTIA Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) and Vice President of Cybersecurity Programs, Susannah Hope, manager in Deloitte’s Risk and Financial Advisory practice, and Kim Milford, who served as Executive Director of Indiana University’s Research and Education Network Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC) at the time of this presentation.

The world of cybersecurity data sharing and governance is changing — fast.  

One change: compliance has exploded. According to Wayne Selk, the Executive Director of CompTIA Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) and Vice President of Cybersecurity Programs, the development of laws like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act have changed the capabilities of data sharing around the world.  

Another? Susannah Hope, manager in Deloitte’s Risk and Financial Advisory practice, said that  governing organizations and companies are increasingly understanding the value of cybersecurity.  

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Moving From Subjective to Objective Measurements of Mental Health  

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This article is based on a presentation at IBA’s 2023 Spring Conference on Healthcare Analytics by Sagar Samtani, Assistant Professor of Operations and Decision Technologies, Weimer Faculty Fellow and Director of Kelley’s Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (DSAIL).

Sagar Samtani admitted during his presentation during the Spring 2023 Institute of Business Analytics Conference on Healthcare Analytics, “From Subjective to Objective Measurements of Mental Health: An Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled Analytics Perspective,” that the audience may be skeptical why, as a cybersecurity expert, he was talking about mental health. 

“Shouldn’t I be in a basement, hacking something?” Samtani joked.  

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Understanding the Data Landscape of ESG Reporting 

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This article is based on a presentation at IBA’s Fall 2022 Forum on Accounting and Finance Analytics: Perspectives on ESG Reporting by Makayla Bonney and Mary Rolfsen, who are both Sustainability Managers for Deloitte Consulting. 

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting is becoming an important aspect of corporate reporting as a result of increasing stakeholder demand for transparency around ESG matters and pending regulations which could require companies to integrate ESG data into their financial statements. This has opened up potential opportunities for individuals with experience in analytics and accounting to develop their careers in ESG reporting. Deloitte, one of the top professional services firms globally, has taken a leading role in the field of ESG accounting. 

Climate change is considered by many to be one of the most significant issues facing this generation. Some experts have even commented the impact of climate change on human health will dwarf that of COVID-19. The Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment, led by faculty from Indiana University, Notre Dame, Purdue, and other institutions, examines climate change as it relates to agriculture, tourism, health, and other local issues. 

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