Ethics and guidelines of AI impact partners
This multifaceted approach ensures that when SAP products with AI elements are adopted, they align with SAP’s AI ethics.
The vendor’s global AI ethics policy is based on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) set of 10 principles grounded in ethics and human rights.
It was designed to guide the use of AI across all stages of a system life cycle and includes the following principles of: do no harm; defined purpose, necessity and proportionality; safety and security; fairness and non-discrimination; sustainability; right to privacy, data protection and data governance; human autonomy and oversight; transparency and explainability; responsibility and accountability; and inclusion and participation.
SAP has also established governance bodies such as the AI Ethics Steering Committee and the AI Ethics Advisory Panel to also incorporate data privacy and security prioritisation as well as sustainability.
For McGibbon these guiding principles aligned closely with the talk track from pioneer in human-centred AI and responsible technology Dr Catriona Wallace.
Although there are frameworks in place, at this moment there is nothing that holds anyone today legally accountable for what AI can do, said Wallace.
“That’s why choosing who you partner with, how [AI] is designed and deployed in your company, is important [and] that it can be done with trusted partners,” she said.
During her talk, Wallace said it was pertinent that the leaders of technology giants, their suppliers, and their customers needed to step into the role of an ethical leader and direct where the “future of humanity and AI can go”.
“AI should be designed with human society and environment with its well-being at its core. It should not come at the cost to those three stakeholders,” she said. “AI should be human-centered value-designed at its core.”
Responsible AI reducing harm and avoiding unintended consequences. AI should be reliable and safe; as well as transparent and explainable.
“It should be contestable and have accountability,” Wallace said. “The accountability lies with the corporation that the AI was deployed in.”
McGibbon said this was one of the reasons why SAP takes AI ethics “very seriously” – it aligned with customers like SA Power Networks using global AI ethics standards to build its “own boundaries internally”.
AI is consistently evolving as the nature of the landscape changes as well, she pointed out. That’s why building AI around the three principles of relevance, reliability and responsibility is a good way to start.
It also requires technology vendors like SAP to talk to its partners from an authentic standpoint and continue to educate them on the changes with its products. From an enablement and a partner capability perspective, the vendor recognised that technology is moving quickly.
“We ran a Partner Acceleration Bootcamp in New Zealand about two months ago,” said McGibbon. “We had about 80 partners there and covered topics around SAP Business AI and Business Cloud products,” she said. “With all of the new tech that we’re doing, we got everyone in a room, [including] the experts [for] a two-day workshop.
“Then we followed up with pre-sales validations, demo [of] the software [and] coaching based on the demonstration…we’re making sure they’re understanding the concepts and explaining it to customers in a way that makes sense.”
According to McGibbon, SAP A/NZ also recently hired a new role for the region who will be dedicated to helping partners as well now with SAP Business AI and SAP Business Data Cloud.
As regional head of growth solutions – AI and business data cloud for partner ecosystem success for Asia Pacific, Johnny Wong will focus on SAP’s growth initiatives for partners in the region, she said.
Lilia Guan travelled to SAP Now AI 2025 as a guest of SAP.
