annual review indst 2024 public - Flipbook - Side 27
Annual Review 2024
human rights report, which included a commitment to
acting in the best interests of children and teens and
launched tools allowing parents or guardians to view how
much time their teenage children spent online.
In 2022, we asked Meta to strengthen
its children and teenagers safety
policy to go beyond the prevention
of exploitation.
In 2024, having observed that these tools rely on selfmonitoring, we asked if the company had considered
more far-reaching, app-wide limits on user interactions or
hours spent. Meta has since unveiled an overhaul of
additional changes to its children and teens safety policy,
with all Instagram users under 18 placed into “teen
accounts” that allow parents or guardians greater control
over their activities, and the ability to see the content
categories that their child is viewing.
Q. What progress have we seen beyond the tech sector?
A. Pharmaceutical company GSK is exposed to emergent
trends in AI adoption and is likely to benefit from various
AI use cases. In our engagement with the company in
2023, we asked it to adopt a responsible use policy for
AI, which outlines its approaches to safeguarding
patients, and its ethical commitments. In early 2024 GSK
shared a draft responsible AI use policy with us and
sought our feedback.
We suggested that it could include details on which
board members had oversight of AI use, as well as clarity
on what reporting structures and procedures were in
place for AI use. The company reached out to us again in
March 2024 to confirm that it had published its
Responsible Artificial Intelligence9 policy on its website
and highlighted that it was able to incorporate some of
our recommendations into its final policy document.
Within the financial services sector, Royal Bank of Canada
(RBC) received a 2023 shareholder proposal on AI
governance and enhancing the mandates of the
governance committee and the risk management
committee. In response, the company disclosed its five
principles for the responsible use of AI, along with the
board’s oversight on strategic direction and priorities.
In June 2023, we met the global head of market and
counterparty credit risk and the interim head of Borealis
AI, RBC’s lab for AI. The company stated that no single
board member had AI oversight, but it relied on the
expertise of all directors, including those with technology
or digital competencies. Considering the proxy disclosures
and the engagement context, we believe that RBC has
sufficiently addressed board-level AI oversight.
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https://www.gsk.com/media/10977/gsk-position-on-responsible-ai.pdf
Workers could be the ones to regulate AI (ft.com)
Q. What is our focus for 2025?
A. Over the coming year, we will continue to engage on
AI governance and ethical use principles, privacy and
freedom of expression, and negative societal impacts
with a strong focus on children and young people.
However, we will expand the scope of our engagement,
emphasising areas of rising materiality, including the
upstream environmental and social impacts of the data
centres required for increased AI deployment, and
human capital management considerations.
Investors and regulators are increasingly concerned that
data centres will divert electricity from renewable sources
that would otherwise improve the sustainability of the
energy mix in the broader economy. The high level of
water consumption by data centres for cooling
represents an additional risk. Companies that are seen as
part of the solution to these challenges, rather than part
of the problem, should benefit from a stronger social
licence to operate and lower regulatory risk.
Companies also need to think about how digital services
and AI impact their employees, viewing the digital
revolution as an opportunity to reinforce their commitments
to their workforce. There is a strong case to be made that
companies which encourage employee engagement on
responsible AI, as well as AI use case development and
deployment, are likely to benefit from improved risk
mitigation and identification of new growth opportunities.10
Companies also need to think about
how digital services and AI impact
their employees.
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