Business leaders are under pressure to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) and unlock the benefits that its advocates tout—greater efficiency, reduced headcount, improved experience, increased profitability, and more.

At the same time, many voices warn of the potential harmful impacts that AI may have on fairness, the workforce, and society. Still others point out the outsized investment, complex implementation, and difficult-to-realize benefits that make investments in AI an uncertain proposition. These dilemmas require us to think differently about both AI and the ethical considerations that accompany it.

The Value Chain of Ethical AI represents a fruitful starting point by equipping us to consider AI as a series of interconnected decisions and actions, each with its own business and ethical implications. The framework provides the roadmap that contemporary leaders need to navigate the complex set of ethical issues that arise along the path to AI-enabled business. Only by considering ethics at each step can we achieve our goal: AI that produces ethical outcomes ethically.

This technical note describes the value chain of contemporary AI and introduces some of the ethical and business considerations in each of the chain's five stages. The note is used at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business in the "AI in Government" course for executives. It is also ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses on business ethics, technology, strategy, decision-making, or in any course in which a foundational understanding of the ecosystem supporting contemporary AI applications is necessary.