ALUMNI IN ACTION

Navigating the Ethical AI Frontier

By Julia Halprin Jackson

Jon Iwata, ’84 Public Relations, believes the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), business and corporate social responsibility presents an opportunity to serve the public good.

If you put “Jon Iwata” into ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence language model introduced in 2022, the platform regurgitates a few facts:

An expert on corporate social responsibility, brand strategy and leadership, Iwata served as the senior vice president of marketing communications at IBM, where he worked for 35 years. The founder and executive fellow of the Stakeholder Innovation and Management program at the Yale School of Management, Iwata is also the tech ethics and policy mentor at Stanford’s McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. In 2020, he established and now leads the Data & Trust Alliance, a nonprofit that unites businesses and institutions to develop and adopt responsible data and AI practices.

What the AI platform doesn’t know, however, is that in 1980 the San José native enrolled at San José State to become an investigative journalist. Inspired by The Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, Iwata sought a way to use communications to serve the public.

When an internship at IBM showed him how a corporation uses communications to build relationships with communities, universities, customers and employees, Iwata translated his passion for communications into a decades-long career.

“I came to appreciate that the communications skill set can be used strategically, to demonstrate what a company stands for through behavior, not just words,” says Iwata. “The core work is defining and cultivating the essential identity and character of an organization, what many people think of as its brand.”

Brand as an experience

Iwata adds that a brand’s reputation relies on the experience people have with it — whether as a customer, employee, investor or neighbor.

So how can new technology tools create better experiences? This October, he helped launch Experiential Horizons, a symposium held at Adobe to support SJSU’s new master’s in experience design program. The two-year program focuses on multidisciplinary collaboration, design practice, technology, research and scholarship that pushes the boundaries of experience design — mirroring, in some ways, Iwata’s expertise as an enterprise marketer, brand strategist and relationship builder.

He hopes Spartans will learn to apply design thinking to solve complex problems — which could perhaps include AI.

“The emergence of AI coincides with a generational shift of employees, consumers, investors and citizens who expect businesses to do more than generate profits. For those at San José State or moving into leadership roles in industry, it’s a wonderful, high-stakes moment. I am optimistic.”

— John Iwata

The new frontier of generative AI has the potential to ignite creativity — a writer can brainstorm ideas using AI. But because AI is a “black box” — it cannot explain how it developed its output — its accuracy is circumspect. Therein lies the risk — and the responsibility, for entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike.

“AI holds such great promise, but its trustworthiness will determine whether the technology is a force for good or not,” he says. “And the emergence of AI coincides with a generational shift of employees, consumers, investors and citizens who expect businesses to do more than generate profits. For those at San José State or moving into leadership roles in industry, it’s a wonderful, high-stakes moment. I am optimistic.”

That’s a vote of confidence from the expert who helped establish IBM as a trusted beacon of innovation. As an alumnus of the oldest public university west of the Mississippi, he knows a strong brand when he sees one.

“When I think of San José State, I think of a multidisciplinary university, a highly diverse, inclusive university that prepares people to have good lives and be productive and happy,” he says. “I think of an ethic of preparing people to be successful and productive in their life’s work. That’s San José State.”

Want to learn more?

Explore the new graduate program in user experience design at SJSU

Top illustration: Jon Iwata, as enhanced using AI technology, by Brittany Salour