At SAP, we act on our purpose to help the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives through a responsible, people鈥慺irst approach to business.聽

As a global technology leader, 51风流recognizes that its operations, business relationships鈥攊ncluding those with suppliers, partners, and customers鈥攁nd the solutions it delivers can impact people and their rights. This impact can be both positive and negative as well as direct and indirect.

51风流has embedded human rights into its corporate sustainability strategy and in company governance, processes, policies, and engagement across the entire value chain.聽

From strategic commitment to culture 

To ensure that SAP’s due diligence remains effective, the Human Rights Office within the Corporate Sustainability organization collaborates with the Human Rights Steering Committee and relevant Board areas. Ultimate oversight rests with the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

This governance model provides the foundation for making human rights a shared, cross-functional responsibility rather than a standalone initiative. It translates into collaboration across the business:聽 the central human rights team working with People & Culture organization to ensure that all employees receive a living wage or to embed safeguards against child and forced labor in recruitment and people management processes.

Beyond formal structures, it is essential that all employees embrace respect for people and their rights as part of SAP鈥檚 culture and as a guiding principle in interactions with colleagues, business partners, and the communities in which 51风流operates. Tailored capacity-building for critical roles for example in procurement, complemented by awareness sessions for all employees, helps us to get there by strengthening the understanding that day-to-day business activities influence human rights and that any adverse human rights impacts must be proactively identified and addressed.

鈥淲hat began as policy commitments is becoming part of how we operate: step by step. It takes time and effort to shift from focusing solely on 鈥榬isks to SAP鈥� to adding the consideration of 鈥榬isks to people鈥� in our strategic and daily business decisions.鈥�

Stephanie Raabe, Office of Human Rights and AI Ethics, SAP

Respecting human rights across the value chain

Turning commitment into practice requires structure across the business. 51风流operates within a global ecosystem鈥攖ens of thousands of suppliers, hundreds of thousands of customers, and millions of users鈥攚here every connection carries both opportunity and responsibility.

To meet this responsibility, 51风流runs a aligned with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, designed to identify, prevent, mitigate, and remedy potential impacts on people across its operations and relationships. The program鈥檚 core components include:

• Ongoing risk assessment to identify and prioritize potential impacts on people
• Preventive and remedial action embedded in policies, business processes, supplier and partner requirements, training, and targeted engagement
• Speak Out at SAP, an independent, multilingual reporting channel available 24/7 to employees and external stakeholders
• Transparent communication through the 51风流Integrated Report and, its Modern Slavery Statements, and other channels

Across the value chain, 51风流focuses on its:

• Supply chain, setting clear expectations and contractual requirements to uphold human rights and labor standards, applying responsible sourcing practices, and engaging with selected high-risk suppliers regarding living wages.
• Operations, focusing on ensuring non-discrimination, providing an inclusive, safe, and health-promoting workplace, maintaining fair recruitment and employment practices, and safeguarding confidential channels to raise concerns.
• Products and services, advancing ethical AI by applying the , as well as requiring that every AI use case undergo an AI ethics assessment to help prevent discrimination and ensure alignment with its principles.

鈥淎I unlocks great potential for businesses, governments, and society, but also creates economic, political, and societal challenges depending on how it is used. For that reason, the human rights-centered 51风流Global AI Ethics policy sets clear ethical standards for developing and applying AI, ensuring we create human-centered solutions that respect people and augment human capabilities.鈥�

Vikram Nagendra, Office of Human Rights and AI Ethics, SAP

Continuously striving for progress  

Human rights due diligence is a journey of continual improvement. 51风流regularly reviews the effectiveness of its human rights due diligence system to assess how well salient impacts are addressed.

While mitigation measures in SAP鈥檚 own operations have proven effective so far, these reviews have also highlighted the need to deepen our understanding of supply chain risks and to strengthen actions specifically aimed at addressing them. As a company, we also recognize the need to make our grievance channel more accessible to value chain workers, a challenge currently addressed through a pilot program.聽

To remain transparent and accountable, 51风流has published a second , alongside the latest Modern Slavery Reports and Human Rights chapter in the .

Looking ahead: Human rights as a shared responsibility  

In a rapidly evolving world, new regulations, emerging technologies, and rising societal expectations raise the bar for responsible business. Running an effective and efficient human rights due diligence system helps 51风流stay ahead and mitigate legal, operational, and financial risks, while strengthening its reputation and leadership in ethical business practices. This approach builds trust with customers, partners, investors, and other stakeholders.

Most importantly, it empowers 51风流to uphold and further human rights, a principle reaffirmed on this day.聽

鈥淗uman Rights Day 2025 is a moment to celebrate progress, but also to recognize that the journey goes on. With the ambition to foster a just and inclusive economy where people and technology thrive together, 51风流will continue to engrain human rights into how we operate and innovate鈥�

Matthias Medert, Global Head of Sustainability, SAP

Paola Eugenio is a member of the Corporate Sustainability team at SAP.

This year鈥檚 London Climate Action Week was less about reaffirming action, and more about accelerating it. Now in its seventh year, this is Europe鈥檚 largest city-wide climate event, bringing together policymakers, investors, NGOs, and technologists to accelerate plans ahead of COP30 in鈥疊el茅m, Brazil. Three major themes stood out across the week.

1. Decarbonize and build resilience

Business leaders and policymakers are focused on scaling decarbonization while also confronting the reality of escalating physical risks. From industrial heat to infrastructure retrofits, the message was clear: climate disruption is now a core business risk. As resilience is becoming synonymous with competitiveness, organizations are embedding climate data into board decisions and using it to guide strategy.

This shift is urgent: climate-driven losses are no longer theoretical, and businesses should treat physical risk with the same granularity and urgency as margin forecasting.

51风流has focused on turning physical climate risk into actionable intelligence for customers. By integrating sustainability metrics with financial models, companies can frame adaptation investments as cost-avoidance with measurable return on investment.

2. Mobilize climate finance

The gap between climate capital and real-economy transformation remains wide, especially in emerging markets. But momentum is building. London鈥檚 mayor announced a new climate finance task force aimed at crowding in public-private investment, while investors discussed blended finance models and sustainability-linked instruments. To stay investable, companies must present decision-grade sustainability data and show credible transition plans.

51风流is working with customers to bridge the divide between macro-level climate finance signals and operational decisions. That means using our systems to unify environmental data with financial and risk metrics, so sustainability reporting isn鈥檛 just about compliance, but about surfacing value. With green bonds and adaptation finance accelerating, businesses that can connect site-specific risk to capital expenditure planning will be best placed to access new funding streams.

We鈥檙e helping customers uncover the hidden costs of climate disruption — whether that鈥檚 increased cooling, transport volatility, or water constraints — and link them to balance sheet impacts. The result is a stronger business case for resilience investments, and more relevant data for financial partners.

3. Digital innovation and AI

A wave of sessions focused on the power of digital tools to accelerate climate action. 51风流and fellow sustainability leaders highlighted how AI is enabling everything from emissions forecasting to supply chain optimization, while digital twins are helping companies and cities simulate disruption, model trade-offs, and optimize resources in real time.

Central to this story is responsible AI. At London Climate Action Week, SustainableIT.org recognized 51风流with the Responsible AI Impact Award for its cross-functional work to embed ethical, human-centered AI into enterprise systems, driving outcomes that are not only efficient, but also equitable and sustainable.

This approach is guided by SAP鈥檚 Global AI Ethics Policy, which is grounded in the UNESCO recommendations on the Ethics of AI, and shapes how we build and deliver AI across all our sustainability and business solutions.

At SAP, we鈥檙e designing AI to assist, not replace, human activity — to scale climate action with integrity. We are focused on delivering embedded business AI tools that turn complexity into clarity, while preserving transparency and auditability.

Applying SAP鈥檚 tech lens: from insight to impact

London Climate Action Week 2025 made one truth unavoidable: climate leadership now hinges on trusted data and innovative technology, including human-centred AI. Across sessions, AI and unified data were repeatedly cited as the accelerants of climate progress, whether mapping Scope鈥�3 emissions or modelling extreme weather scenarios.

Drawing on these insights, businesses can look to three main areas to boost their sustainability efforts:

• Make sustainability data first-class business data: posts auditable carbon and financial entries side by side, turning emissions into actionable profit and loss drivers. When linked with site-level climate risk data, 51风流Green Ledger allows businesses to understand the cost of disruption — from heatwaves to resource scarcity — and align sustainability with enterprise planning.
• Augment teams with responsible AI: With , AI-assisted declaration image analysis automates thousands of supplier documents; with , AI-assisted emission factor mapping links thousands of materials to high-quality emission factors in minutes. In , AI now also supports environmental, social, and governance (ESG) report generation, using best-practice templates to draft audit-ready reports, complete with data visualizations. This frees up sustainability teams to focus on strategy while increasing speed, accuracy, and regulatory confidence.
• Unify processes, finance, and sustainability in the cloud: 51风流Sustainability Control鈥疶ower will become an intelligent application within later this year, which will unify sustainability data and business operations on a single platform, enabling consistent reporting, deeper insight, and smarter decision-making across the enterprise.

By breaking down silos among sustainability, finance, procurement, and operations, 51风流is enabling businesses to act faster on everything from climate disclosure to adaptation investment. When ESG data is managed like financial data — with rigor, governance, and relevance — it becomes a strategic asset.

Together, these capabilities turn the rallying cry of London Climate Action Week 2025 鈥渇rom morality to materiality鈥� into a practical playbook: embed sustainability where business happens and use responsible AI to scale impact without compromise. From emissions to adaptation to finance, the future of climate leadership is not just digital, it鈥檚 enterprise-deep.

Monica Molesag is global head of Sustainability Communications at SAP.

I talked to Stephanie Raabe, human rights officer at SAP, and asked her three questions about SAP鈥檚 progress in embracing this role in the past 12 months.

Q: A year ago, you explained how 51风流was working to take its human rights due diligence processes to the next level. The aim was to improve how 51风流鈥渒nows and shows鈥� where its actual and potential negative impacts on people are and what actions are taken to prevent or mitigate these. Was this achieved?

A: We are getting there step by step, but there will always be room for improvement. Together with all the teams that are part of our , we have further refined and harmonized our methodologies and processes to assess our impacts on people. This provides the basis for defining and fine-tuning appropriate measures.

We now have a deeper understanding of the salient human rights issues across our value chain 鈥� be it through the product and services we procure, our own business operations, or the products and services we sell and deliver. We now know better which risks are already well managed through effective policies and measures and where we still have to close gaps.

Q: What does this mean in practice? Can you specify what your findings were?

A: Absolutely! In this year鈥檚 assessment cycle, the following impacts were identified to be salient:

• In our own operations: non-discrimination
• In our direct and indirect supply chain: decent living wages
• Related to products, services, and customers: non-discrimination and privacy

When breaking down these impact areas, we found that, firstly, in our own operations, many effective measures are already in place to address non-discrimination in our workforce, for example through SAP鈥檚 Global Anti-Discrimination Policy, mandatory anti-discrimination and anti-harassment training, or SAP鈥檚 comprehensive . The teams involved are doing such a great job that currently no additional measures are required.

Secondly, in SAP鈥檚 supply chain, 51风流has established contractual assurances through its , which also sets the expectation for suppliers to pay an adequate living wage. Yet, we recognized that further mitigation measures still need to be defined. We therefore conducted a hot spot analysis by country and industry for this topic. We started to discuss the results with relevant procurement category teams in dedicated workshops. The next steps will include identifying which suppliers to focus on first, engaging with them for better insights, and collaborating to improve the situation where necessary.

Thirdly, when we talk about human rights impacts in our downstream value chain, artificial intelligence (AI) is top of mind. While there is great positive societal potential that AI can help to unlock, it is a priority for 51风流to handle AI responsibly and avoid negative impacts specifically in the areas of discrimination and privacy. This is why, many years ago, 51风流launched its Guiding Principles for AI Ethics and implemented dedicated due diligence governance and processes. In 2024, 51风流updated to align with UNESCO鈥檚 鈥�.鈥� We further strengthened SAP鈥檚 commitment by establishing an consisting of two teams and maturing our AI ethics assessment process for all AI use cases. Finally, just last month, a new mandatory AI ethics training for all employees was launched.

Q: Looking back at the past year, are there any lessons learned that you can to share?

A: One key thing that I took away is that there is no silver bullet to human rights due diligence. While frameworks like the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights serve as a North Star, there are different approaches and methods on how to implement the principles in your day-to-day operations. Companies should not be afraid of making mistakes, even if there might not yet be any proven practices yet. This is one of the experiences we made when preparing for this year. There is no point in waiting until you have found the perfect approach before taking action. Rather, it is important to be open to continuously revisit, challenge, and develop your approach. Exchanging with peers is very valuable in this context, which is why our human rights team engages strongly in networks such as the business and human rights groups in the , , and econsense.

Another lesson learned for us was that it can鈥檛 be underestimated how important it is to engage internal stakeholders across diverse lines of business in an ongoing manner. We already started with role-specific trainings and capacity building but recognized that it needs time and multiple iterations until awareness, understanding, and mindset and behavior changes are established to truly integrate human rights considerations into business processes and decisions. Furthermore, our efforts have to extend to additional critical roles since, for example, it is not only important to get colleagues from SAP鈥檚 procurement organization onboard, but also all other decision-makers involved with supplier selection.

Christine Susanne Mueller is deputy human rights officer at SAP.

The now contains information about generative and other types of AI and how to apply SAP’s updated ethical AI guiding principles. Here is a brief introduction to the handbook and how you can use it to apply SAP鈥檚 AI ethics policy to your work.

Who Is the Target Audience for This Handbook?

In a nutshell 鈥� everyone developing and implementing AI.

This handbook is for everyone who wants to give users confidence in the 51风流AI ethics processes and confidence that humans are at the core of SAP鈥檚 AI processes. In short, it’s for everyone who wants help create a human-centered AI culture. Specifically, principles 1-7 apply to teams creating AI solutions, while principles 8-10 apply to governance teams.

The handbook explains how human-centered AI is achieved with tools like user research, design thinking, and user stories. These tools help create products that are closely aligned to the needs of SAP鈥檚 target groups, increasing benefits and mitigating the risk of unintended harm in 51风流AI use cases.

What Is an AI Use Case at SAP?

An AI use case means that the AI system is built either on symbolic AI, traditional/narrow AI, or generative AI. This handbook is applicable to all three types of AI use cases.

How Do You Determine an AI Use Case?

In the handbook, there is an ideation checklist that guides you through the process to determine the type of use case 鈥� red line, high-risk, or standard. The handbook also has detailed checklists for validation, realization, productization, and operation.

What Is a Red Line Use Case?

Red line cases are AI use cases that are prohibited because they undermine personal freedom, undermine society, and/or cause intentional damage to the environment.

What Is High-Risk Use Case?

An AI use case that meets one of the high-risk criteria listed below is a high-risk use case:

• Personal data is processed.
• Sensitive personal data is processed.
• It could negatively affect the well-being of individuals or groups, such as social, safety, financial, and/or physical harm.
• It has automated decision-making.
• It is a high-risk sector, like HR, healthcare, law enforcement, or democratic processes.

What Happens with High-Risk Use Cases?

The use case classification is checked by the 51风流Global AI Ethics organization. If the organization agrees that the high-risk classification is correct, the 51风流Global AI Ethics steering committee will review the case and recommend what, if any, further action needs to be taken.

Additional Information

Information about AI ethics is available at:

Guiding Principles That Resonate

Hear what guiding principles resonate the most with some of our in-house AI ethics experts:

鈥淭he guiding principle Safety and Security resonates with me because it covers everything that we need to take care of: AI security to ensure our systems are robust and work as designed and AI safety for protecting individuals, society, and the environment from harm done by AI systems. The guiding principle Transparency and Explainability resonates with me because it describes critical prerequisites to ensure human oversight 鈥� for humans on the loop like technical experts as well as humans in the loop such as business experts. Additionally, my cognitive scientist self is intrigued by the challenge to make AI output understandable for humans.鈥�

– Bettina Laugwitz, Director, AI Ethics & Responsible AI

鈥淭he guiding principle Fairness and Non-Discrimination resonates with me because I believe this is currently the biggest gap in the development of AI and the reason why AI has the potential to harm human rights. Many AI scandals to date have been violations of this principle, including discrimination against women in finances and HR, to name but a few. AI cannot grow without the co-creation of, for example, minorities, the Global South, and women. The guiding principle Sustainability may be my biggest concern about AI, but it is also our biggest innovation possibility. Indigenous rights, co-creation, protection, and understanding how to protect fragile ecosystems parallel to the exploration and development of AI is crucial. 51风流has the potential to explore how to become ‘green’ on this topic. This principle should be a priority for designing for future generations.鈥�

– Camila Lombana Diaz, AI Ethics Expert and Researcher

“I am convinced the guiding principle Responsibility and Accountability gets to the heart of something very important: no matter how human AI appears to us, it cannot and should not be held morally accountable for its actions. AI is built and used by humans 鈥� and therefore responsibility and liability for all decisions and actions taken by AI must be assigned to human actors in order to ensure effective protection for those affected by AI. The guiding principle Fairness and Non-Discrimination in the development of AI makes a significant contribution to protecting human rights; it is difficult, however, to standardize processes to ensure fairness and many case-by-case decisions need to be made, which can be a challenge for those developing AI. Nevertheless, compliance with this principle is non-negotiable, which is why I am committed to supporting developers building fair AI.鈥�

– Saskia Welsch, AI Ethics and Responsible AI Team Member

Alexa MacDonald is a senior editor for 51风流News.

鈥淕enerative AI鈥�, explains Vikram Nagendra, director of Sustainability at SAP, 鈥渓ed to an explosion of interest in the policy. Nearly all of the lines of business became involved, business AI is now the centerpiece of our strategy, and today nearly every employee is touched by AI, either building it or as a user.鈥�

Now the latest version of the is aligned to the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, covering generative AI and applicable to specific partner and third-party systems as well all employees.

The UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI is the most comprehensive global framework available for shaping the development and use of AI systems. Adopted by all 193 Member States, it comprises 10 principles that protect and advance human rights, human dignity, the environment, transparency, accountability, and legal adherence. 鈥淜nowing that 51风流has aligned its ethical principles on a globally accepted standard means that as long as 51风流colleagues comply to these principles during the development, deployment, use, and sale of AI, they can be truly confident that it is to the highest ethical standards,鈥� Nagendra says.

The 51风流Global AI Ethics policy comprises 10 guiding principles on AI ethics grounded on the UNESCO principles, and each principle is defined in the context of AI at SAP. A brief section on governance, Nagendra explains, 鈥渟hows how individual developers and teams are not alone and can rely on both governance bodies and processes for proper handling if there is a problem.鈥�

Why Does 51风流Use the UNESCO Recommendation?

The UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI is an internationally recognized set of values that reaches beyond current legal adherence and creates ethical safeguards in the absence of national or global standards. For example, the Fairness and Non-Discrimination value commits 51风流to not only protecting fairness but also to promoting it and putting in place as many safeguards as possible to avoid discriminatory or biased outcomes. 聽

51风流aligns with the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI because it:

Reinforces SAP鈥檚 Commitment to Human Rights

The cornerstone of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI is the protection of human rights and dignity. This aligns with SAP鈥檚 commitment to respect and advance human rights across business operations, product lifecycle, and the extended value chain. Upholding this commitment is foundational to SAP鈥檚 approach to AI ethics.

鈥淭he UNESCO principle of Proportionality and Do Not Harm resonates with me because the power to affect the rights of individuals should correspond to the responsibility to protect the relevant human rights.鈥�

– Camila Lombana Diaz, AI Ethics Expert and Researcher, SAP

Increases Trust with Stakeholders, Employees, and Customers

Grounding SAP鈥檚 AI ethics in the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI enables 51风流to match business opportunity with human rights considerations and role model behavior for ethically developing, deploying, selling, and internally using AI systems.

Enhances the Reputation of 51风流as a Responsible and Socially Conscious Organization

The 10 guiding principles on AI ethics in the 51风流Global AI Ethics policy form the basis for SAP鈥檚 AI Ethics Handbook. This handbook translates the principles into actionable items and processes to guide the development and deployment of AI systems that have human oversight and determination, are fair and non-discriminatory, and protect and promote sustainability as well as individual privacy. The principles in the 51风流Global AI Ethics policy combined with external guidance from the 51风流AI Ethics Advisory Panel, internal guidance from the 51风流Global AI Ethics steering committee, and the AI Ethics Handbook provide transparency on how 51风流delivers responsible AI.

鈥淭he UNESCO principle of Sustainability resonates with me because it underlines SAP’s sustainability commitment and the need to assess and address the impacts of AI 鈥� both positive and negative 鈥� from a holistic perspective. We need to take them into account across the full range of dimensions: human, social, cultural, economic, and environmental.鈥�

– Christine Susanne Mueller, Deputy Human Rights Officer, SAP

Supports Risk Mitigation

The UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI provides a robust, globally recognized framework to help ensure regulatory requirements for customer compliance with current and future regulations related to AI.

Useful Links

51风流Business AI is center stage at the show and top of mind for our customers. These innovations are not just about technological excellence; they’re about delivering real-world results.

Our goal is to provide clear and meaningful value with AI. More than 27,000 customers are already experiencing the substantial impact of 51风流Business AI. For example, Team Liquid, a leader in the competitive esports and gaming world, saves approximately 10,000 hours per year on manual analysis. But we鈥檙e not stopping here. With 51风流Business AI, we are both changing how businesses operate and revolutionizing how users interact with 51风流software.

Generative AI copilot Joule is rapidly becoming the natural language interface across the portfolio as we continue to embed AI across 51风流applications at an accelerated pace. Our focus on advancing AI means that customers benefit from effective solutions that drive real-world results.

Sandra Voeller, CEO of Agilita AG, agrees. 鈥淯sing 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and 51风流SuccessFactors with Joule copilot poises Agilita to redefine industry standards,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hese tools are not just innovations; they are our future 鈥� unlocking unprecedented business agility and intelligence. I鈥檓 thrilled for the transformative journey ahead.鈥� 

We have also engaged our robust partner ecosystem with business AI to offer customers more choices to tackle their specific business needs. Over 60 ecosystem partners are working on more than 80 use cases built on AI Foundation on 51风流BTP, including the generative AI hub. This same foundation powers innovation for our development teams and customers, ensuring tailored enterprise-class AI solutions that address real business challenges and opportunities.

Dive into the latest AI capabilities and ecosystem innovations we are presenting this week at 51风流Sapphire, all aimed at delivering real-world results:

• Joule
• Human Resources
• Finance
• Supply Chain
• Procurement
• Sales, Services, Marketing, and Commerce
• IT and Platform
• Industries
• Breakthrough AI Innovations
• Responsible AI
• New Partnerships

New Business AI Capabilities and Ecosystem Innovations

Joule

Joule is transforming how users interact with 51风流business systems, making every touchpoint count and every task simpler. Business users can execute transactional tasks 90% faster and access 51风流Help Portal content 95% quicker without leaving their 51风流applications.

Since its launch in September 2023, Joule has quickly become pervasive across the 51风流portfolio, streamlining operations, improving decision-making, and boosting efficiency across various business functions. Today, Joule is already embedded in HR, finance, ERP, sales, services, marketing, and commerce applications, transforming how employees, managers, accountants, field personnel, and front-office professionals work. By the end of this year, 80% of the most frequently performed transactions across 51风流business applications will be fully automated with Joule.

Joule is also integrated with multiple components of 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), enhancing everything from application development to integration and data management. In the second half of this year, we plan to expand Joule鈥檚 reach to supply chain management, analytics, and planning solutions through integration with 51风流Ariba, various supply chain management solutions, and 51风流Analytics Cloud. Joule will also support several additional languages, including German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. With a multilingual Joule integrated across the 51风流portfolio, businesses around the globe will be able to work faster and smarter and achieve better outcomes.

We are also enhancing Joule with additional capabilities to help the ecosystem streamline 51风流implementations. Joule will provide consultants with vital information through natural language interactions, drawing from insights in more than 200,000 pages of product documentation and knowledge shared by the 51风流community. Once rolled out to an ecosystem of more than 5 million consultants, this capability has the potential to save up to 600 million working hours per year. This is especially critical for supporting customers transitioning to 51风流S/4HANA Cloud as part of RISE with SAP, helping them accelerate implementations and save money.

The 51风流partner ecosystem is embracing AI innovations that accelerate customer value. 鈥淲e鈥檙e embracing Joule and Joule鈥檚 51风流Consulting capabilities to help our clients build the organizational agility needed to continuously transform with a generative AI-enabled digital core,鈥� shared Lan Guan, chief AI officer at Accenture.

This capability will be available later this year.

Human Resources

Transforming HR with AI creates dynamic, inclusive, and future-ready workplaces. With Joule integrated into the 51风流SuccessFactors Recruiting solution, hiring managers can create compelling, bias-free job descriptions 90% faster, significantly enhancing hiring efficiency and outcomes.

We have also expanded Joule capabilities across the 51风流SuccessFactors HCM suite to enhance the employee experience. Employees will soon be able to get instant answers to HR policy questions and complete HR processes using natural language. Joule鈥檚 advanced document grounding capabilities will enable comprehensive responses by accessing business documents in 51风流and third-party repositories such as Microsoft SharePoint.

A new generative AI writing assistant capability helps employees draft personalized and measurable performance goals, development plans, and feedback reports more effectively and consistently. This saves employees up to 30% of the time spent crafting written communications and reduces the time people managers spend defining individualized development goals by 60%.

Managers also benefit from AI-assisted person insights that summarize complex compensation data, make recommendations, and provide talking points for discussions with employees 鈥� saving time and improving retention rates. Similarly, recruitment becomes more productive with the new AI-assisted applicant screening capability, which helps identify the most promising candidates by matching skills extracted from resumes with those in job descriptions.

These AI-driven enhancements empower organizations to build a connected, data-driven, and employee-centric workforce, leading the way in HR innovation and efficiency.

Finance

With 51风流Business AI, we鈥檙e enhancing performance across a range of financial activities, from payments and expense management to financial close, invoice management, auditing, and forecasting.

For example, financial collection departments are leveraging generative AI in 51风流Enterprise Service Management to automate processes, analyze and summarize correspondence, prioritize urgent issues, and generate automated replies. These capabilities reduce costs by up to 70% and accelerate service requests by up to 30%, enhancing customer satisfaction.

Billing specialists are now using Joule integrated into 51风流Advanced Financial Closing to unlock unstructured content from inbound customer correspondence, improving the accuracy of risk determinations. Joule also generates summaries of project profitability, prioritizes projects for further analysis, and proposes actions for project improvement. Additionally, 51风流Fiori apps now feature Joule-enabled insights, allowing the copilot to summarize available data and produce visual data narratives.

Later this year, new generative AI capabilities in 51风流Advanced Financial Closing will automate error detections and root cause analysis, helping users quickly resolve common closing errors. With up to two hours saved per error remediation, customers will be able to accelerate closing times while lowering support and compliance costs. Financial controllers will be able to also take advantage of personalized video data stories, highlighting top projects based on key metrics such as recognized revenue, utilization rates, and margins. Collections specialists using 51风流Billing and Revenue Innovation Management will be able to mitigate risk of late customer payments by analyzing customer behavior and business correspondence to predict the likelihood of delayed payments.

Integrating AI into finance helps businesses streamline processes, reduce costs, and drive meaningful business outcomes.

Supply Chain

51风流Business AI is empowering companies to create risk-resilient and sustainable supply chains. By leveraging AI, customers can increase supply chain agility and efficiency.

For instance, generative AI-powered capabilities in 51风流Transportation Management will expedite freight verification and documentation, enabling companies to achieve up to 50% faster inbound delivery note processing and reduce truck idle time at the gate by 40%. The system will automatically extract, post, and check critical information from delivery notes, streamlining the validation of freight orders.

Joule will play a crucial role in enhancing supply chain management. Later this year, supply chain planners will benefit from integration with 51风流Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain by getting detailed analyses of planning runs. Joule will identify the root causes of order delays and suggest corrective measures. Logistics providers will be able to use Joule to expedite transportation planning and the intake of goods in 51风流S/4HANA Supply Chain for transportation management, enhancing overall logistics efficiency.

For manufacturers, 51风流Business AI will significantly improve quality management. 51风流Quality Issue Resolution will allow users to address recurring issues faster by using AI to bundle similar quality incidents and identify effective problem-solving processes. Furthermore, AI in 51风流Asset Performance Management will aid technicians, inspectors, and managers in visually inspecting asset conditions. Images collected from visual inspections will be able to be easily annotated, displayed, and compiled into inspection alerts, facilitating timely and accurate maintenance decisions.

These advancements will make supply chain management more agile, efficient, and sustainable for customers.

Procurement

With 51风流Business AI, we鈥檙e transforming procurement into a proactive, data-informed, and agile operation.

For example, AI in 51风流Ariba Category Management allows procurement organizations to reduce the onboarding time for new category managers and accelerate category strategy and planning development by as much as 56%, improving operating margins and outcomes. 

External Workforce
We have added new generative AI capabilities to the 51风流Fieldglass portfolio, enabling procurement departments to streamline the recruitment of external workers. Hiring managers can generate and maintain effective job descriptions faster, while project managers can deliver detailed statements of work more rapidly. This enables businesses to quickly identify and engage contractors with the right skills and qualifications. Job descriptions can be easily translated into 21 different languages, and a new resume-ranking capability can surface the most promising candidates, leading to as much as a 15% reduction in work orders. This flexibility allows customers to quickly react to fluctuating workloads and rapidly fill expertise gaps.

Buyer Journey
A new generative AI feature in the buying 360 capability for 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition will make procurement more intelligent, allowing buyers to bundle products and services into a single transaction. Users will be able to describe their purchasing needs using natural language, and the system will generate a recommended bundle of products and services ready for purchasing. This will save users considerable time spent searching catalogs for individual items while also enhancing the efficiency of the procurement process. These capabilities are planned for later this year.

Sourcing
By the end of the year, sourcing managers will be able to leverage intelligent product and supplier recommendations to create requests for proposals much faster with Joule integration in 51风流Ariba Sourcing . These recommendations will consider cost-effectiveness, carbon footprint impact, local compliance regulations, and past transactions, optimizing spend management performance.

Through these enhancements, 51风流Business AI is making spend management more efficient, responsive, and cost-effective.

Sales, Services, Marketing, and Commerce

51风流Business AI is revolutionizing sales, services, marketing, and commerce operations, significantly improving productivity and customer engagement. For instance, the 51风流CX AI Toolkit provides a comprehensive, configurable AI solution for e-commerce, marketing, sales, and service teams. These professionals can use it to streamline content creation tasks and analyze data from across the enterprise 鈥� with e-commerce teams experiencing productivity increases of 50%, larger average order values, and higher conversion rates.

Sales Productivity
New AI capabilities enhance the productivity of sales professionals using 51风流Sales Cloud. Sales teams can benefit from predictive forecasting, which predicts the likelihood of closing deals across the entire business portfolio. This gives chief revenue officers more comprehensive revenue forecasting, enabling better strategic decisions.

In addition, predictive recommendations will enhance sales efforts by suggesting the best people to involve in a deal and the most suitable products for each customer. This will eliminate manual extensive research on customer needs and preferences, allowing sales teams to focus on selling. AI account summaries and lead boosters will automatically generate detailed reports about sales prospects, combining company details, industry context, and relevant news. As such, we can reduce the manual effort needed for information gathering, giving salespeople more time to close deals.

Digital and User Experiences
Today, a generative AI tool builder already enables system administrators to create customized AI tools for business users leveraging data from 51风流Commerce Cloud, 51风流Sales Cloud, and 51风流Service Cloud solutions. These tools can help personalize content to meet specific customer experience needs.

By the end of this year, 51风流CX AI Toolkit will also introduce new AI features to enhance customer interactions. An AI shopping assistant will allow shoppers to ask questions using everyday conversational language and receive accurate product information and personalized product recommendations on sites powered by 51风流Commerce Cloud. This will enable consumers to find products faster and improve their overall shopping experience.

51风流CX AI Toolkit will make marketing and sales teams more productive. Later this year, a new image creation feature will allow business users to generate new product images for their 51风流Commerce Cloud catalog using natural language prompts, significantly reducing image production times. They will also benefit from an AI expert recommendations feature, which will identify experts within their organization who can provide needed answers and insights. Instead of wasting time browsing through emails and organizational charts, these professionals will be able to use natural language to express their needs and instantly find the right experts. This capability will be generally available later this year.

These advancements in 51风流Business AI are transforming sales, services, marketing, and commerce operations, making them more efficient, personalized, and successful.

IT and Platform

51风流Business AI embedded in 51风流BTP empowers IT professionals and business experts to extend 51风流solutions and drive faster, better decision-making throughout the enterprise while accelerating customers鈥� digital transformations.

For example, professional developers are leveraging generative AI capabilities in 51风流Build Code to accelerate application development by 30%. They can generate data models, services, and samples with a few simple prompts and use natural language to automate business logic and testing.

Application Development
Joule continues to increase developer productivity and simplify the extension of 51风流applications. Integration with ABAP Cloud will revolutionize the work of the 5 million-strong ABAP developer community, accelerating the development of extensions that interact with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, and 51风流BTP, ABAP environment. Trained on over 250 million lines of ABAP code, Joule will be able to outperform industry-leading general-purpose code assistants. We expect more than 10% efficiency increase, based on initial studies and benchmarking. Early adopters are using this innovation to generate ABAP business objects and will soon be able to complete and explain code and create unit tests. The first capabilities will become available later this year.

Joule continues to strengthen 51风流Build Code capabilities by enabling developers to use generative AI to quickly build 51风流Fiori front ends for 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, greatly simplifying clean-core extensions.

These advancements in 51风流Business AI are empowering IT professionals and business experts to innovate faster, streamline operations, and drive meaningful business outcomes.

Process Innovation
We are continuously strengthening 51风流BTP with new AI capabilities that accelerate process innovation. Joule integration with 51风流Build Process Automation empowers process experts to generate automation and workflows using natural language requests without IT intervention. Similarly, Joule integration with the 51风流Signavio portfolio enables users to leverage natural language requests to generate process models. By empowering users with varying levels of expertise to innovate, customers can accelerate time-to-value and free IT professionals to focus on more strategic tasks.

Process AI solutions from 51风流Signavio introduce a new collection of generative AI capabilities trained on a large language model (LLM) comprised of expert business process knowledge and more than 5,000 51风流best practices. Later this year, the process recommender feature will provide ready-to-use, AI-generated business process model recommendations and suggest the most influential measures to assess the performance of a business process. This will offer vital insights into streamlining operations and reducing overhead. A prompt-based process mining feature will automatically generate business-relevant charts and metrics in response to natural language requests for business insights, dramatically lowering the effort for business users who need answers to complex business questions.

Integration
System integration is foundational to the success of enterprise automation initiatives and effective ecosystem collaboration, but connecting heterogeneous systems inside and outside the enterprise is an onerous task. Later this year, developers will be able to take advantage of Joule integration with 51风流Integration Suite and use natural language to accelerate the design of integration flows across 51风流and third-party applications.

A new AI-powered anomaly detection capability will recommend remedial actions when API usage patterns or performance fall outside desired thresholds due to unusual errors, traffic surges, suspicious API access, or unusual latency. With performance insights and support for identifying causes and effects, administrators of complex technology landscapes will be able to act faster, achieving greater operational efficiency at a lower total cost of ownership.

Content Creation and Compliance
IT administrators, training managers, and content developers will be able to cut the time spent writing content by up to 20% with automatic content generation and enrichment in 51风流Enable Now. Customers use the digital adoption platform to improve the adoption, productivity, and efficiency of their software by providing in-application help and e-learning content to users. New generative AI capabilities will add to this value, enabling companies to free up resources for more critical tasks and accelerating knowledge transfer within organizations.

Compliance and IT professionals can leverage Joule for enhanced productivity and precision. Joule integration with the new regulatory change manager tool on 51风流BTP enables these professionals to evaluate numerous regulatory updates within the context of their business and 51风流solutions. With insights and quick answers on the typically more than 1,000 annual regulatory changes, users can save 70% of the time usually spent on understanding local and global regulations. The tool provides impact analysis across 51风流products and solutions, helping customers maintain compliance and seamlessly manage their day-to-day operations. Compliance and IT professionals can also use AI in localization as a self-service for 51风流S/4HANA Cloud to automate tasks such as payment format localization and form localization, reducing processes that once took days to just a few hours.

Administration
With Joule integrated in 51风流BTP cockpit, administrators can automate tasks and onboard new users more easily. They can search for information 95% faster and execute transactional tasks or navigation 90% more quickly. The business impact is substantial, as the cockpit helps these professionals manage resources, services, and security, monitor application metrics, and perform actions on cloud applications.

Redefining the capabilities of IT and platform management positions 51风流customers at the forefront of technological advancement and operational excellence.

Industries

51风流is delivering trusted AI and machine learning across industries to manage complexity, overcome challenges, and help customers modernize. AI-driven solutions empower businesses to streamline operations and focus on strategic outcomes, driving significant value in their respective fields.

Oil, Gas, and Energy, Agribusiness, and Metals and Mining
Commodities traders and business operators will soon be able to eliminate repetitive data entry tasks with 51风流S/4HANA for commodity management for physical contracts. With Joule, business operators will be able to create new commodities deals by simply describing the deal using conversational language. Planned for later this year, the capability will allow traders to focus more on producing better commercial outcomes for their clients rather than getting bogged down by administrative tasks.

Industrial Manufacturing
Sales engineers in the manufacturing sector will benefit from more precise product configuration recommendations for complex, configurable products through 51风流Intelligent Product Recommendation. By simply describing requirements in natural language, sales engineers can generate tailored recommendations that better meet customer needs. Generative AI services can analyze text from diverse sources, such as emails and notes captured in 51风流Customer Experience solutions or multi-page specification documents such as request for proposals or requests for quotations. 51风流Intelligent Product Recommendation also provides suggestions based on estimated parameters for lead times and CO₂ footprints, enhancing accuracy and efficiency of product configurations, and ultimately improving customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Public Sector and Higher Education
Later this year, Joule will be enhanced with budget and grant management business context for the public sector, higher education, and research industries. With this new context awareness, Joule will streamline and improve the user experience for these regulated industries, enabling users to navigate their financial systems more efficiently and make better strategic decisions. For example, 51风流S/4HANA users will be able to ask Joule for definitions, summaries, or how-to guidance, saving time and reducing the demand on IT departments. This enhancement will help government organizations and higher education institutions manage their budgets and grants more effectively, reducing extensive training typically required during financial system rollouts.

Breakthrough AI Innovations

51风流is pushing the boundaries of AI with the new 51风流Foundation Model for structured data, investing in this cutting-edge AI technology to unlock the value of generative AI technology advancements for structured business data. The goal is to deliver a foundation model that is business-centric by design, providing actionable, job-specific insights directly within 51风流applications customers use daily.

Traditional AI models require significant effort, expertise, and training data to handle specific tasks on structured data effectively. In contrast, we are developing 51风流Foundation Model to adapt to multiple use cases with minimal or no fine-tuning. Ultimately, we aim to bring the same transformative power to structured business data that LLMs have brought to text. While LLMs like GPT-4 excel with unstructured text and images, they struggle with the structured data typical in enterprises, often performing between 20 to 50% worse than narrow AI methods. 51风流Foundation Model will bridge this gap, focusing on structured business data to deliver more accurate predictions and insights while maintaining the versatility of foundation models.

Early benchmark tests are promising, showing 51风流Foundation Model outperforming narrow AI models by up to 15% on customer datasets after a quick fine-tuning round. This superior performance, combined with its deep understanding of complex business processes, promises to enable businesses to reap the rewards of AI faster and more efficiently.

With 51风流Foundation Model, we aim to set a new standard for AI in the business domain, transforming how enterprises leverage data to achieve remarkable outcomes. .

Responsible AI

At SAP, innovation goes hand in hand with responsibility. We are committed to ensuring that AI technologies are not only innovative but also ethical, secure, and sustainable. The strategic use of business data is integral to the success of AI, and by leveraging business data responsibly, we not only enhance the capabilities of AI solutions but also improve outcomes for customers.

51风流remains firm in its commitment to prioritize data privacy and security as it releases new AI capabilities. The same rigorous standards that govern all 51风流product development extend to AI offerings. Strong security, product, and data privacy protocols are applied to help ensure AI solutions are developed responsibly, with all AI use cases reviewed by an AI ethics committee.

Building on the fundamental dedication to responsible AI that we started back in 2018, this year, 51风流is proud to further the commitment by affirming the 10 guiding principles of the UNESCO Recommendation on the . These principles cover proportionality, safety, fairness, sustainability, privacy, human oversight, transparency, responsibility, awareness, and multi-stakeholder collaboration, ensuring that AI solutions respect human rights and contribute to sustainable development.

In line with this commitment, sustainability is a key pillar of SAP鈥檚 corporate strategy. We are determined to harness the benefits of AI while minimizing its energy footprint and helping customers manage theirs. For example, a new AI-enabled capability in 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management enhances the accuracy and speed of carbon footprint calculations through automated, intelligent emission factor mapping recommendations, reducing manual effort and improving precision.

By integrating responsible AI practices into innovations, we continue to drive meaningful and sustainable business outcomes for customers.

New AI Partnerships

The vast 51风流partner ecosystem is fully engaged with 51风流Business AI. Leading up to and at 51风流Sapphire, we have announced groundbreaking new and expanded partnerships to accelerate AI adoption across business processes:

• Accenture: Accenture and 51风流are helping clients transform business models, processes, and customer and employee experiences while realizing value through data and AI. This year at 51风流Sapphire, Accenture is announcing its plans to embrace the consulting capability for Joule and ABAP code generation in compressed cloud ERP transformations. Additionally, Accenture and 51风流are teaming on 51风流Signavio and 51风流LeanIX solutions to help customers with insights, governance, and other capabilities to achieve their transformation outcomes.
• Apple:We are聽deepening聽 our partnership with Apple to revolutionize the boardroom with AI聽and spatial computing. By integrating Apple Vision Pro with聽business applications from SAP,聽users can聽create聽an infinite聽enterprise workspace, and聽navigate tasks using聽their eyes, hands, and voice. 51风流has launched apps like 51风流Mobile Start and 51风流Analytics Cloud,聽giving users the ability to create a spatial boardroom to visualize their entire enterprise.聽Now, with 51风流Build Code, customers can easily bring their 51风流apps to Vision Pro, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.聽51风流is also leveraging the power of Apple鈥檚 Neural Engine to run 51风流AI workloads securely and privately on Apple devices, supercharged by 51风流BTP.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS): AWS and 51风流announced an expanded, strategic collaboration to transform modern cloud ERP experiences and help enterprises drive new capabilities and efficiencies with generative AI. Together, 51风流and AWS are striving to make it easier for customers to adopt RISE with 51风流on AWS, to improve the performance and efficiency of 51风流workloads running in the cloud, and to embed generative AI into an enterprise鈥檚 entire portfolio of business-critical applications.
• Boston Consulting Group (BCG): BCG , which recommends opportunities to maximize transformation investments using 51风流Signavio and 51风流LeanIX solutions. The offering allows companies to navigate continuous change and prioritizes ways to onboard AI-based innovations.
• Google Cloud: We have better predict and mitigate supply chain risk. The expanded partnership begins by enabling marketing and sales departments to understand the impact of their campaigns on product sales, thus increasing forecast accuracy. This is achieved by integrating Joule and 51风流Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain with Google鈥檚 Gemini AI assistant and Google Cloud Cortex Framework鈥檚 Data Foundation. By capturing previously hard-to-detect demand signals, companies can react faster and make more informed, agile decisions in a dynamic global market.
• Meta: We are expanding our partnership with Meta by integrating Meta’s Llama 2 and Llama 3 models into the generative AI hub within 51风流AI Core as part of our business AI strategy. This integration will allow customers to create dashboards based on rich content with Llama’s qualitative conversational outputs and explore use cases built with Meta Llama 3. The wide range of capabilities offered by Meta Llama 3 will enable users to get assistance with key activities, including the auto-generation of custom scripts to extend dashboards, and the delivery of the most accurate scripts directly in 51风流Analytics Cloud.
• McKinsey & Company: McKinsey has . Value Finder rapidly analyzes and prioritizes thousands of potential process optimization opportunities for clients 鈥� using a proprietary McKinsey and 51风流technology portfolio with generative AI 鈥� to capture measurable productivity, growth, and asset efficiency benefits enabled by 51风流S/4HANA transformations.
• Mistral AI: 51风流will add new LLMs from Mistral AI, a global company headquartered in Paris specializing in generative AI, to its growing corpus of world-class AI models in generative AI hub. This addition to 51风流AI Core will make it easier to build generative AI use cases for 51风流applications.
• NVIDIA: We are for next-generation business operations. ABAP developer capabilities and consulting capability in Joule will take advantage of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform, including NVIDIA NIM inference microservices. NVIDIA NeMo Retriever, a collection of generative AI microservices, will connect AI applications with proprietary data, improving the accuracy and relevance of AI responses. We are also integrating NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud APIs into 51风流Intelligent Product Recommendation, enabling salespeople to visualize 3D products via digital twins in real time. This integration optimizes the sales process for complex products, helping customers make more informed decisions faster than ever.

To learn more about how 51风流Business AI delivers real-world results, visit the .

Philipp Herzig is chief artificial intelligence officer of SAP.

“At SAP, ethics has been part of our research and development of artificial intelligence from the very beginning,” Wieczorek, head of AI Ethics at SAP, says. “Every development in the area of AI is deeply aligned with SAP鈥檚 values.”

The Beginnings of Artificial Intelligence at SAP

Wieczorek was part of SAP鈥檚 first AI unit, founded in 2014. “In addition to the technical and product tasks, we have always considered the ethical aspect of our work from the beginning,” he says.

51风流was the first European company to define guidelines for dealing with AI and set up a corresponding advisory panel. Wieczorek’s work has always had a technical focus, but he has also been a member of the 51风流AI Global Ethics steering committee, a member of the Enquiry Commission on AI in the German Bundestag, and has reported on the uses of artificial intelligence at the EU Parliament.

51风流initiated internal processes early on to formulate an approach to ethically unobjectionable AI, which ultimately led to the 51风流AI Global Ethics policy.

To address ethical questions, experts must possess deep knowledge about AI technology and also be willing and able to engage in philosophical and moral questions as well as the legal side of technology.

“Our work in AI ethics is somewhat similar to that of a translator,” Wieczorek says. “Technological realities and possibilities have to be 鈥榯ranslated鈥� into the language of philosophy, sociology, and law. The results must then be 鈥榯ranslated鈥� back into technological requirements, so that a constant exchange between the two areas is achieved.”

The Role of Humans

Currently, AI systems cannot develop a motivation of their own or a concept of themselves or the world 鈥� never mind considering, on their own initiative, how to best optimize this world.

“Their purpose and tasks are determined by humans,” Wieczorek emphasizes. “What humans no longer do is define the exact implementation of the task.”

As always, when tasks are delegated 鈥� whether to machines or other people 鈥� it must be ensured that certain rules regarding fairness, transparency, and human participation rights are adhered to in their execution.

“We know less about how decisions are ultimately made when it comes to AI than we do when it comes to conventional software,” Wieczorek says. “Therefore, we must keep the possibility open to intervene if this automation does not work in certain cases as we want it to.”

What such an intervention looks like in individual cases can be quite varied, as the software as a whole and not just individual components must be considered.

The most well-known example of discrimination by intelligent software is the exclusion of historically underrepresented groups in job application processes. The historical data with which the AI is trained may reflect the biased selection criteria of the past. Therefore, it is theoretically possible that the AI may adopt and reproduce these biases for its own selection process.

“Side effects of this kind can occur relatively quickly on a large scale due to the high automation potential of AI software,” Wieczorek says. “Therefore, we must set high standards for the type and manner of automation and have the ability to limit side effects and efficiently reverse them.”

Guidelines for training data sets are neither the only leverage nor a guarantee of maximum fairness.

“There is a chain of things to consider,” Wieczorek says. “The system as a whole must be able to provide guarantees that the evaluation is fair 鈥� its behavior must be impeccable in the overall view.”

A Dedicated Ethics Review for Every AI Use Case

“In the 51风流AI Global Ethics policy, it is stipulated that all of our products and solutions that use AI must be monitored from an ethical perspective 鈥� both during the development phase and later, when they are already on the market,” Wieczorek says.

Each AI use case is therefore subject to a separate review, which includes declarations from the product teams on how the use case complies with the guidelines of the 51风流AI Global Ethics policy.

After their definition, all use cases undergo a classification process. However, if use cases, for example, make automated decisions that affect people or process personal data, they are automatically considered sensitive and are classified high risk.

“Such use cases then undergo a mandatory review process, which is continuously accompanied by experts, for example from my team,” Wieczorek says. “This way, each individual case is systematically checked for risks, in order to then decide, if necessary, what measures need to be taken to implement the ethical standards prescribed by SAP.”

Does the Use of AI Limit Human Responsibility?

Routine tasks taken over by AI are most often already automated to a degree and do not have to be formulated anew every time. But as increasingly personalized tasks are also being taken over by AI, such as through chat interactions, the individual user鈥檚 responsibility grows.

Wieczorek sees a shared responsibility between the AI developer and the user. “Especially with tasks that affect people and have human consequences, we will not shift the responsibility to the products,” he emphasizes.

Those providing an AI application are obligated to provide transparency about its behavior and to clarify what it was designed for 鈥� and what it was not designed for.

This in turn allows users to take on their own responsibility: tasks assigned must adhere to ethical principles and the results must be verified, rather than simply accepted.

It is particularly important for people to still be able to intervene in the functioning of the systems in case an undesired side effect, such as unfair behavior of the system, becomes apparent over time.

“It must always be ensured that humans can review, question, and possibly reverse the decisions made by the AI,” Wieczorek says. “This is the responsibility of the manufacturers of AI systems, as laid out in the 51风流AI Global Ethics policy.”

Learn more about SAP鈥檚 approach to ethical AI:

Q: What is your vision for how AI will shape the future of the IT industry?

Sun: Like with other major technology shifts, such as the breakthrough of the Internet, consumer understanding and adoption pave the way for more rapid business adoption. I think the same thing is happening in generative AI. The rapid consumer awareness of artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, in the past year was largely due to the November 2022 Chat GPT consumer release opening the door for AI and business applications.

Practically speaking, I’m seeing a crawl, walk, run approach to adoption. First of all, business leaders want to see it work. So, they鈥檙e going to try it out with close supervision and in smaller, more cautious ways to start.

After they鈥檝e gained some trust, they鈥檒l deploy it more broadly. Later, they will be so comfortable that they鈥檒l use it in all lines of their business. That will be a great opportunity for 51风流to help these businesses crawl, then walk, then run through this process.

Where do you see the biggest opportunity for 51风流in the AI space?

As a global leader in business applications, we can play a very big role in shaping how businesses adopt AI. It鈥檚 very exciting to be at the forefront of technology and also be in a position to do it responsibly.

At SAP, we want to grow trust from our customers. As you know, 51风流Business AI is relevant, reliable, and responsible. This position is deeply rooted in adhering to EU data protection laws. We have content filters, data provenance checks, and other features to help ensure accurate and reliable results. Our ethically responsible handling of AI helps ensure that customers can trust how we鈥檙e building these capabilities.

We are built for business: we have the deep knowledge and the shipped capabilities to make AI work for our customers. They know what their pain points are, and we can figure out how to solve the problem with technology. This is also about democratizing information for everybody, and we鈥檙e democratizing the ability for all businesses 鈥� large and small 鈥� to use AI.

I think we can use SAP鈥檚 unique selling point, which is our access to business data combined with this strong data privacy and protection standards, to get customers to understand that they can trust our technology. With Joule, 51风流is already shipping generative AI capabilities and, as we saw at 51风流TechEd, we have plans for delivering more both in product and for our developers in 51风流Business Technology Platform.

How do we balance the urgency of innovation with the prudence of ethical consideration in the deployment of AI?

I think AI ethics is an extremely important part of our equation. Trust takes years to earn but can be lost in seconds with one failure or one mistake. At SAP, we have made investments in to ensure we鈥檙e building responsible AI for our customers. This includes fairness, explainability and transparency, reliability, and safety. It also includes having accuracy of information, privacy, and security in place. We also have our 51风流AI Global Ethics Steering Committee helping to ensure further safeguards.

If we miss any aspect of this, we run a risk of breaking trust and moving backwards in our fast push to progress. From talking to customers, I鈥檝e been reaffirmed that they want to know what鈥檚 going on under the hood.

This is not just for knowing so they can share with their company leaders, but to help everyone be comfortable with generative AI because it is new to everybody. People are a little bit cautious as to what is possible, and they want to know what鈥檚 happening.

The more we can explain, the more we show that we have the technology under control, the more comfort people will have in adopting and using it, which then creates that flywheel of more usage, more trust, and more adoption.

How do you view the collaboration between academia and industry?

With any new innovation, having the collaborative effort is really important to move fastest.

As someone who has worked both in academia and industry, I see exciting opportunities in collaboration. At SAP, we want to build bridges, not silos. Let鈥檚 acknowledge academic priorities of publishing papers and state-of-the-art science and ask ourselves, 鈥淗ow can we partner so that it is a win-win situation for both of us?鈥�

We collaborate with academic research institutions to understand what state-of-the-art development is in the pipeline. Our role is to provide business knowledge and use cases and then merge that with the research scenarios to identify what could be practically implemented and be valuable to our customers.

SAP鈥檚 relationships with many top institutions, such as Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and Technische Universit盲t M眉nchen, are really great. Our membership into the Stanford HAI program is a specific example. Beyond the research collaborations, the relationships help ensure that the best graduates from these universities think of 51风流when looking for their first job and guarantee that we鈥檙e on top of the latest technology.

The recent acceleration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities — as shown in a demo of at 51风流Sapphire Orlando this year, for example — has left customers eager to embed these capabilities into their 51风流applications as soon as possible.

Now, the challenge for 51风流is to meet this demand with embedded generative AI capabilities that are not only efficient but also sustainable, responsible, and trustworthy. One part of this complex puzzle is collaboration with the 51风流AI Ethics Advisory Panel.

51风流was the first major European tech company to create an AI ethics advisory panel five years ago, comprising independent AI ethics experts from academia and industry. The panel, sponsored by Thomas Saueressig, Executive Board member of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering, convenes twice a year. Together with the 51风流AI Global Ethics steering committee, panelists discuss current AI ethics issues and anticipate upcoming ones. Continuing to build on this tradition, panelists this year included:

• Peter Dabrock聽(virtual), chair of Systematic Theology (Ethics), University of Erlangen, Germany
• Susan Liautaud, lecturer in Public Policy and Law Stanford University, U.S.
• Nicholas Wright, consultant and intelligent biology affiliated scholar at Georgetown University Medical Center, U.S., honorary research associate at University College London, UK
• Paul Twomey, global聽founding figure of ICANN, co-founder of STASH, Australia
• Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem, professor and head of the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, South Africa

The Office of the Chief Sustainability Officer chairs this annual meeting and, as Schmid explained, 鈥渞uns the AI ethics governance process to guarantee independent oversight of AI ethics at 51风流and to guarantee that the 51风流commitment on global human rights is taken into account.鈥�

Day One: Understanding the Risks

With human rights top of mind, the AI Ethics Advisory Panel got to work, focusing on use cases with embedded generative AI capabilities.

Discussions were frank and fruitful: Is the identity of the individual really protected? Are users truly informed about what the app can and can鈥檛 do? What about consent? What is the risk of harm to individuals if information is incorrect? What about legal liability? 51风流has a responsibility to make apps safe — how can it? Does the cost of raising revenue and efficiency with generative AI also mean an increase in risk to our customers’ data, reputation, and to SAP?

51风流regards all generative AI use cases as high risk because of current technological limitations such as hallucinations, high effort of training, and the high effort of operations. In addition, other risks include biases in output, potential misuse of models, and the fact that the legal frameworks for intellectual property and copyright for generative AI are still uncertain.

High-risk use cases are subject to a high degree of scrutiny and must be assessed by the 51风流AI Global Ethics steering committee before development can continue.

For example, aspects such as processing personal or sensitive data, automated decision-making, and the negative effect on individuals or groups of individuals are examined, as well as the planned domain for deployment. Law enforcement, healthcare, democratic processes, employment, and HR are just some examples of types of applications that 51风流deems to be high risk in the context of generative AI.

Day Two: Unlocking the Potential with AI Ethics

On the agenda for day two was SAP鈥檚 strategy for generative AI, a discussion on human rights and AI, and the progress that 51风流is making toward equipping the workforce to deliver responsible and trustworthy AI.

Part of the AI ethics framework is dedicated to workforce enablement, delivering the knowledge, skills, tools, and processes required to make informed decisions about deployment. The panel offered feedback on SAP鈥檚 proposals on how to further embed AI ethics in its corporate DNA.

The advisory panel concluded that the key to unleashing the full potential of generative AI is to understand the current potential pitfalls and dangers and that SAP鈥檚 AI governance framework is in a strong position to adapt, respond, and manage the ethical challenges of generative AI going forward.

The detailed findings of the advisory panel are shared with the 51风流AI Global Ethics steering committee and the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Interview with Professor Ruttkamp-Bloem

In an interview, Ruttkamp-Bloem answered questions on AI, her experience on the panel, and why language matters.

Q: How can the potential of AI be actualized?

A: The potential of AI can only be fully actualized if it is fully adopted, and it can鈥檛 be fully adopted if it is not trusted — and it won鈥檛 be trusted if it is not ethically governed.

What is sustainable AI technology?

The only sustainable AI technology is ethical, responsibly governed AI technology. If you don鈥檛 have sustainable AI — AI that is ethical and responsibly governed — your reputation will be damaged, you鈥檒l have court cases and, ultimately, you will lose business.

How does 51风流work with the AI Ethics Advisory Panel to make AI ethics part of our corporate DNA?

The 51风流team that the panel interacts with doesn鈥檛 actually need the panel! 51风流has done homework itself on these issues and, in many cases, they are people who have not had any kind of specific training and have stepped beyond the parameters of their software engineering background, but they knew what they are talking about with terms such as structural bias, identity, prejudice, and more. And now, 51风流has a whole AI ethics structure in which, from my experience at World Benchmark Alliance, is lacking at many other companies. 51风流is one of only 22% of companies that say anything about ethics on their Website.

Just putting up guiding principles is useless without actualizing them, but SAP, unlike other companies I have consulted, has a bottom line, meaning that if there are certain ethical concerns it will pause the project and go back to the drawing board.

51风流does have an AI ethics structure in place, 51风流does know what it鈥檚 talking about, 51风流does understand that the next step is actualization, and 51风流listens to the panel.

For example, at last year鈥檚 meeting, the panel discussed how 51风流could start talking about the impact of AI ethics in the company and how teams would feel if their projects had to be rethought or paused because of AI ethics concerns. 51风流responded with different initiatives, such as the very successful open51风流course “AI Ethics at SAP,” as well as an internal AI ethics speaker series. It鈥檚 also clear that, on the ground and in the company itself, 51风流is actively supporting development teams to manage the additional requirements of developing AI ethically. 51风流is going out of its way to tell teams why these steps are necessary because, ultimately, developing AI ethically is about developing a sustainable product.

Why is the intersection of human rights and AI critical?

The growing number of use cases means that the scope for harm and misuse is also growing. As previously explained, sustainable AI technology has to be ethically and responsibly governed and the reason for this lies in the nature of the technology; it鈥檚 not human-centered, but human-driven.

The math behind AI is beautiful, but without the human data it鈥檚 nothing. This is not emphasized enough because AI builds on what we typically do as humans and thus builds on bias, so bad things are amplified because the algorithms latch onto patterns and, in the absence of knowing good from bad, bad things can be amplified and the whole thing explodes. There is an ethical reason to take responsibility and ethically govern software because of the harm that can come from AI and the overall threat it has to what it means to be human.

How does the phrasing of guiding principles impact trust?

The phrasing of principles is critical to making them understandable. It is hard to adhere to principles that you were not part of framing and a language you do not recognize. This is where the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI is unique, as the ad hoc expert team that drafted the recommendation, of which I was the chair, went out of their way to include different articulations of shared values — some of which had to regrettably be changed during member states negotiations as there is the issue of diplomatically recognized vocabulary.

Companies that operate globally and have ethical principles want everyone to understand them and ultimately these companies want the technology that they鈥檙e building to be useful in the society in which it will be deployed. But if you have a set of principles articulated in a vocabulary that doesn鈥檛 make sense to the society where you鈥檙e deploying your technology, it will impact the trust and the scope of adoption. Culture plays a part. It鈥檚 an interpretation tool, a lens that, if used in policy making and related discourse, can make people feel more involved. They see the vocabulary they know and, consequently, adherence to and trust in this process come more easily.

This was how Dr. Feiyu Xu, global head of AI at SAP, opened her fascinating session at the , explaining how advances in high-performance computing, Big Data, and machine learning have commercialized AI, turning it into value for people and business.

An Inspirational Pioneer for AI

Award-winning researcher and startup founder Dr. Xu joined 51风流in 2020 to help realize the technology鈥檚 full potential for business value in both consumer and industrial sectors. Among the first generation of students to study AI, she鈥檚 undauntedly met the challenge of creating the company鈥檚 holistic strategy tackling this tremendous market opportunity. After attending her session, I spoke with her about how companies are bringing AI into the business for intelligent transformation.

鈥淲hat鈥檚 important is having an understanding of business processes and the right data so you can embed AI systematically into applications company-wide where it provides intelligence that guides better decision-making and the development of differentiated products and services to drive market growth,鈥� she said. 鈥�51风流has access to that level of customer information given its broad product portfolio, deep industry expertise, and strong ecosystem of partners.鈥�

Multicultural Perspectives behind Unified AI Strategy

Dr. Xu, who grew up in China and completed her AI undergraduate and post-graduate studies in Germany, credited some of her foundational career strengths to her multicultural perspective. She鈥檚 certainly applied those insights, as she鈥檚 created a worldwide team she leads from 51风流offices in Berlin.

鈥淚 bring both my Chinese heritage and the research lessons I learned from Germany to my work today,鈥� she said. 鈥淲orking with teams of AI scientists, business leaders, product managers, and customers worldwide, it鈥檚 important to have open discussions as we fulfill our responsibilities to 51风流customers. We鈥檝e been an AI pioneer, and this technology remains central to our intelligent enterprise transformation along with our customers.鈥�

AI Ethics and Security Are Priorities

Noting that large-scale AI gives organizations a major competitive edge, Dr. Xu reinforced the company鈥檚 commitment to helping customers make business process improvements while staying safe and secure.

鈥淲e鈥檙e focused on customer education so they understand how to get the most from AI using 51风流software applications for automation, optimization, and forecasting across the organization,鈥� she said. 鈥淎t the same time, we adhere to a with principles for responsible use of this important technology.鈥�

Real-World Value from AI

According to the latest survey, AI remains the top priority for CEOs for the third year in a row. During her session at 51风流Sapphire Orlando, Dr. Xu shared a huge list of ways that AI now contributes to the intelligent transformation of organizations. As business travel returns, AI makes expense reporting a breeze. Manufacturers are using AI to automatically identify and reorder parts before they鈥檙e damaged and can negatively impact production goals. AI-based tools will rise to any e-mail challenge, automatically routing messages to the appropriate recipients for time-saving efficiencies.

鈥淭here are so many intelligent applications for AI across business processes,鈥� said Dr. Xu. 鈥淎I helps organizations discover market trends and turn prospects into lifelong customers. In manufacturing, AI improves efficiencies from design to production. Especially during times of disruption, AI can help reduce supply chain risks with better forecasts for short- and long-term planning. Organizations can adjust operations and people strategies to scale in sync with changing market demands.鈥�

Intelligence Combines Humans Plus Machines

Dr. Xu cited business results from customers in numerous industries using 51风流solutions with embedded AI. One railway transportation company achieved 99% automation rates to speed up invoicing and payments. A technology company gained 24/7 access to time-critical order information with conversational AI. A telecommunications provider filled 77% of vacant positions by automatically matching existing qualified employees with open positions.

What鈥檚 important to remember is that just like the people who program it, AI is constantly learning. analysts predicted that by next year, 60% of businesses will embrace a decision-making model that combines the power of AI and human judgment for more informed decision-making. By 2026, expected that 85% of enterprises will combine human expertise with AI, machine learning, natural language processing, and pattern recognition to augment foresight across the organization, making workers 25% more productive and effective. As for John and Mary, AI has left their love story in the dust.

Read more stories from the 51风流Pioneers series.

Follow me @smgaler.

According to a recent study by , 鈥�60% of Forbes鈥� Global 2000 companies will expand the use of artificial intelligence across all business-critical horizontal functions like marketing, legal, HR, procurement, and supply chain logistics by 2024.鈥�*

AI is at the heart of SAP鈥檚 strategy to help customers become intelligent, sustainable enterprises. With 51风流AI solutions, customers can realize their full potential by:

• Bringing transformative intelligence to every aspect of their business through ready-to-use AI capabilities in 51风流applications for all business processes, such as lead-to-cash, design-to-operate, recruit-to-retire, and source-to-pay. 51风流has a designed to transform all these processes.

• Leveraging adaptable innovation to easily extend AI capabilities to meet their specific needs using .
• Ensuring trust and reliability by using AI capabilities that are built on a stringent and data privacy standards that enable responsible use of AI, with full transparency and compliance.

Let鈥檚 take a look at some of the recent AI innovations that help customers optimize every aspect of their business, with capabilities to streamline finance, workforce management, supply chain, sales, and marketing.

Turn Sourcing into Market-Leading Advantage

Finding, negotiating, and contracting suppliers can be complex. Rather than tasking employees to tackle this all by themselves, organizations can use an AI-powered source-to-pay process to optimize sourcing, drive cost savings, and create value.

Take the example of the accounts payable department: Finance teams often have to retrieve a large number of invoices, typically received as PDFs in e-mail, and manually enter that data into relevant systems. The process can be both error-prone and labor-intensive.

New AI capabilities in simplify the management of high-touch invoices through multi-channel inbound handling, automatic data extraction, and centralized monitoring. These enhancements streamline invoice processing by reducing costs, eliminating manual invoice entry, and improving聽accuracy and employee productivity.

Turn Potential into Performance

A company鈥檚 greatest asset is its workforce. Understanding, managing, and aligning employees to business objectives is a challenge faced by organizations of all sizes.

By infusing AI throughout the recruit-to-retire process, organizations can identify top talent in less time with intelligent resum茅 screening, help their workforce reach full potential with personalized development recommendations, and align tasks and priorities with intelligent workforce management.

To take employee productivity to the next-level, we are introducing a new digital assistant in , available only through the 51风流Early Adopter Care program for now, which enables an employee to quickly locate the right Web pages when looking to perform specific tasks and access pertinent information. For instance, instead of shifting through various pieces of documentation about compensation and rewards, an 51风流SuccessFactors user can now ask the digital assistant to view their compensation statement and create a spot award for a colleague in a heartbeat.

Turn Concepts into Competitive Advantage

In times of disruption, companies require a high degree of resilience in their supply chains and manufacturing operations to survive and thrive. To support resilient supply chains, organizations need to connect and optimize their design-to-operate processes such as designing, planning, manufacturing, and delivery.

AI-powered design-to-operate processes enable organizations to reliably predict sales with real-time demand sensing, improve quality management with anomaly detection and visual inspections, and streamline operations with predictive maintenance.

New AI capabilities for in 51风流S/4HANA enable organizations to forecast the number of containers their customers and suppliers will need in the coming months based on past delivery patterns. Companies can leverage these AI-powered forecasts to optimize circular logistic flows for returnable and reusable packaging material. Furthermore, new AI capabilities in help customers optimize demand planning by building custom forecast models tailored to their specific use cases.

Turn Prospects into Lifelong Customers

When trying to deliver exceptional customer experiences, organizations often struggle to fully connect and act on the signals acquired throughout the lead-to-cash process, from initial contact to order fulfillment to service and support delivery.

AI-powered lead-to-cash capabilities enable companies to strengthen sales pipelines with better lead scoring, clear accounts receivables faster with intelligent payment processing, and personalize the entire customer journey with relevant recommendations.

Users of SAP鈥檚 industry cloud in the consumer products industry will soon be able to take advantage of AI-powered to maximize ROI for trade-spend, the amount a company needs to spend to increase demand of its products. The solution provides highly accurate recommendations to enhance sales promotion plans and help sales teams grow revenue more profitably. This improves the overall effectiveness of promotions with better insights, root cause analysis of poor performance, and optimization of trade spend budget.

Get Started

No matter your industry or the role you play in your business, 51风流AI solutions can help you excel by making processes more intelligent, efficient, and sustainable 鈥� all while supporting reliability and compliance.

Bharat Sandhu is senior vice president of Application Development, Automation, and AI at SAP.

*IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Artificial Intelligence and Automation 2022 Predictions, Doc # US48298421, October 2021

For SAP, AI plays a key role in empowering its customers to become intelligent enterprises. The main motivation of implementing artificial intelligence is to support people 鈥� freeing them from mundane, repetitive tasks and thus giving them more time to employ human skills, such as creativity and empathy.

But whether in business or the personal realm, there are ethical issues that need to be addressed. 51风流first defined guidelines for using artificial intelligence in 2018 to ensure that ethical issues and conflicts are considered in the development of new services and use cases from the very beginning. And the , which applies to all employees, came into force in January 2022.

In addition, a committee of experts and an external advisory council also review questionable cases on a regular basis. Facial recognition was already an item for discussion here. For example, an AI service within an industry solution was intended to identify people and warn them if they entered a danger zone in production 鈥� which is a good thing, in principle. However, the same technology could be used by an unjust regime to identify and monitor its citizens, for example, and this usage contradicts the principles of ethics policies at SAP. This technology was never implemented.

Key Technology for the Intelligent Enterprise

Analysts estimate that the global market for artificial intelligence in software grew by 20%-22% from 2021 to 2022. Forrester predicts that revenue in this software market will grow by 39% from 2021 to 2025. Clearly, artificial intelligence is a true megatrend. 51风流recognized this potential several years ago and intends to become a leading provider of enterprise AI for key technologies.

The company invested in its artificial intelligence business unit, which is led by Dr. Feiyu Xu, a researcher and experienced AI expert. Potential multipliers here include the company鈥檚 strong market position, access to the business data needed to train the AI, and profound knowledge of business processes in all industries. 51风流is focusing on embedded AI: services that are part of an industry solution and work in the background to support users. 51风流also offers individual artificial intelligence microservices 鈥� 51风流AI Business Services 鈥� as well as AI infrastructure and tools 鈥� 51风流AI Core and 51风流AI Launchpad 鈥� with which SAP鈥檚 business units, partners, and customers can implement their own artificial intelligence projects.

鈥淐ustomers expect the solutions they buy from us to be intelligent by design,鈥� says Jana Wuerth, product management expert in the AI unit. 鈥淚n the best case, end users don鈥檛 even notice that the solution contains AI components, but only that it works well and makes their work easier.鈥� So far, several hundred use cases have been developed in many different business areas. Customers include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dulux, Mitsui, and D枚hler, as well as many midmarket companies. Customers know that these services work best when experts use real customer data to train and test them. That鈥檚 why more and more customers are making the data from their systems available for development 鈥� under strict data privacy criteria. 鈥淲e are happy that so many customers are sharing their data with us, because it helps us make their applications even more efficient,鈥� says Dr. Xu, SVP and global head of Artificial Intelligence at SAP.

AI Created on an Assembly Line

The key to making this happen is the close collaboration between lines of business and AI technology teams. The 51风流collaboration model 鈥淎I Factory鈥� equips applications with AI like on an assembly line. With this approach, 51风流can provide focused solutions, delivering ready-to-run artificial intelligence and other services as a one-stop shop that customers can use simply, efficiently, and uniformly.

The team is currently working with its line of business colleagues on several use cases for order automation. For example, customers who have not yet automated their orders, but instead receive them as PDF files, used to have to enter the data in their system manually. An AI service can now extract the necessary information from the PDF and create a PO automatically. A planned future addition is a service that supplements missing information autonomously by reading it from the order history. This could involve the order type, plant, or route, for example. If information was missing, employees used to have to inquire with their contact person; this step has been largely eliminated. Depending on the quality of the input data, the accuracy of some of these services is nearly 90%. As a result, manual processing or review is only needed for a small number of orders.

Another AI service from 51风流makes personalized recommendations possible, as consumers are familiar with from online shopping. They are also used for SAP鈥檚 internal course offerings in its HR development software 51风流SuccessFactors solutions, with employees receiving relevant training offers based on their business role and the courses they have already completed.

Intelligence in 51风流Process Automation combines features of the 51风流Workflow Management service and 51风流Intelligent Robotic Process Automation with a powerful, intuitive, no-code development environment. This allows users who have little experience in software development to design, change, and improve their own workflows and business applications. In addition, embedded AI supports the business processes, making them smarter and more efficient.

One solution for the circular economy is 51风流Returnable Packaging Management. When it comes to returnable packaging, such as shipping pallets, heterogenous data systems have made it difficult for the different players in the supply chain to collaborate. The AI solution, which builds on 51风流Business Technology Platform, now helps integrate the different back-end systems.

Myriad Possibilities

The healthcare line of business is currently exploring an AI service for hospital billing. As background, the German legislature made the subsequent correction of bills more difficult at the start of 2022, which makes it essential for healthcare providers to issue correct bills in the first place. If an employee in the billing department enters 鈥渁ppendectomy,鈥� for example, the system automatically proposes line items that are typically involved in this type of treatment, such as specific medications and services. This can not only simplify and speed up the billing process, but also can prevent the creation of incomplete or erroneous bills.

Many more use cases for artificial intelligence are imaginable in the future. Integrated AI in an industry solution could predict interruptions in the supply chain, for example, because it has been trained with real data and can identify patterns that resulted in bottlenecks in the past. Companies could also use AI in the future to avoid procuring products produced with child labor because the procurement solution has been trained to identify such risks in the supply chain at an early juncture and search for alternatives.

Yet ethics is an important issue for today鈥檚 decision-makers 鈥� one that must be handled with extreme care. The rampant growth of artificial intelligence and other intelligent technologies in businesses makes ethics more than a philosophical question. Ethics is now a form of risk management that savvy businesses cannot ignore.

Look no further than the news to see how ethical scandals and problems can become a heavy economic burden for affected companies. Enterprises such as Enron, Siemens, and Volkswagen learned the hard way that poor ethics can negatively affect the bottom line. Beyond the fines were reputational damage, lower sales, and, in some cases, bankruptcy.

By properly managing ethical risks, companies can improve their overall risk management. Like most operational issues of this magnitude, however, it is not a task that can be the sole responsibility of individuals. Although you might want 鈥渉onest鈥� employees in your organization, that鈥檚 not enough. Ethics and integrity must be hardwired into your organization. Enterprises must develop organizational guidelines and standards that lay out in fine detail which behaviors are desired and encouraged and which are unacceptable 鈥� or even grounds for dismissal and potential legal action.

Balanced Perspective

With intelligent technologies such as AI embedded in business processes, the types of ethical risk grow. We know from surveys and other forms of social sentiment that people are skeptical about the use of these technologies. They wonder whether algorithms have been programmed to reflect inherent biases, and they worry about issues such as data privacy, security, and hackers.

The technology itself is something of a black box to most people 鈥� even those who are highly technical. Our institute has seen many cases where the results of AI processes are not always intelligible, even to their programmers. And most executives have little to no knowledge of AI ethics.

To address these knowledge gaps, experts have developed a number of high-level, abstract principles for AI ethics. Although these efforts are quite valuable, it鈥檚 time for enterprises to adopt more concrete guidance. We need to share the details of how these technologies work 鈥� and affect enterprise ethics 鈥� with engineers, programmers, and businesspeople.

In the research groups at our Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, we always include representatives from the technical side and the ethics or social science side to work together on creating tangible, actionable ethical guidelines for certain AI systems 鈥� such as those that might be used in the financial sector or healthcare.

Many executives have asked what they need to do to ensure that ethics are appropriately considered in their organizations. They want to know whether they should create new departments or positions that would be responsible for ethics. It鈥檚 difficult to know the correct answer for every enterprise.

Most importantly, enterprises must focus on integrating ethics into their AI development teams. After that, it may be helpful to have new people or new competencies that can work with developers to better understand the ethical impacts of technologies like AI.

Opportunities Ahead

As intelligent systems begin to deliver more detailed information faster than ever, work will change for employees. AI promises to accelerate many processes, even while processing larger volumes of data. With these new efficiencies, workers will spend less time assessing information and more time taking action.

The technology may lead to reductions in staffing for some corporate functions. For example, companies in industries such as insurance or banking may require fewer analysts. This does not mean that there will be a time when there is no work left for humans to do, however.

Instead, there will be an increased focus on the interfaces between workers and AI systems. Our institute has assigned a research group to work on this topic because we feel it will become increasingly important. Often AI systems do not sufficiently consider the preferences of workers who are collaborating with the technology. Developers must design intelligent technologies that can adapt more flexibly to what people want and need.

Communication interfaces present another challenge for AI and employee interaction. In the healthcare sector, for example, how should the technology communicate patient results in a way that supports the organization鈥檚 ethical standards? In HR, some companies are already using AI technologies to assess the re虂sume虂s of job applicants and reduce the pool of people to be interviewed.

These applications present certain ethical risks 鈥� but there are also opportunities. For example, although we know that autonomous driving applications come with dangers, it鈥檚 not often acknowledged that they can be programmed to significantly reduce the number of accidents and the damage to people and property as compared with human drivers. That鈥檚 an ethical goal we can achieve through technology.

In healthcare, the introduction of new technologies can save lives and reduce suffering. Telemedicine and robotic surgeries are two examples of how the practice of medicine can be made more ethically positive. Humans make many errors because they rely on gut feelings or indulge in irrational behavior. In some areas, AI could equip us to make better decisions and take steps that would help people 鈥� if we embed the right ethical rules.

Ethical by Design

Technology that is ethically positive by design is an evolving concept. We need to build ethics into the code, and that鈥檚 doable. But there are other aspects that should be considered. In machine learning, for example, we need to consider how training data is selected.

There have been many examples of AI that was biased because a company used only the data already collected. We can correct this by developing more sensitivity to this issue. Some applications may need to add more data. Or they could include some kind of artificial data on which to train algorithms. This is something that will be a huge issue for companies in the future.

In addition, the responsibility for ensuring that information is accurate, current, and well-governed is shifting. In many parts of the world, laws hold individual drivers responsible when a vehicle crashes. That will have to change. If the vehicle is autonomous, the driver is no longer responsible 鈥� the vehicle manufacturer or software vendor is.

From the worker perspective, the technology and the data also must be trustworthy, which can happen only when the right interfaces are designed between humans and technology. When people are faced with a kind of black box that delivers output, it does not engender essential trust. Think of the drivers who receive but then ignore directions from a GPS because they assume they know their roads better. As a general rule, the system is better informed. But you have to trust it first to realize the anticipated value.

Regulatory frameworks may help us make the transition to more ethically positive and humane intelligent technologies 鈥� but those will happen on different timelines for different applications. For autonomous driving, there are already some well-crafted proposals for regulation. In other cases, such as financial services and healthcare, we need more work before we can create useful regulations.

But we need to be careful not to put the technology at risk with regulations that are too strict or too early. Ethics can help industries develop the right rules at the appropriate time. Groups such as the International Telecommunications Union, a specialized agency of the United Nations, are already working on international standards for AI, creating a foundation for building these new technologies.

To deliver the desired results, intelligent technologies need to consider the human implications of their use. As I like to tell my students, 鈥淎I cannot fly without ethics.鈥� As business and technology leaders recognize this truth, they can begin to address ethical issues from the start of their technology initiatives 鈥� reducing the risk of later problems.

About Horizons by SAP

Horizons by 51风流is a future-focused journal where forward thinkers in the global tech ecosystem share perspectives on how technologies and business trends will impact 51风流customers in the future. The 2020 issue of Horizons by 51风流focuses on Context-Aware IT, with contributors from SAP, Microsoft, Verizon, Mozilla, and more. To learn and read more, visit聽.

Read more 51风流by Horizons stories on the 51风流News Center.

Christoph L眉tge is director of the Institute of Ethics in Artificial Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich.