CEO’S REPORT ETHICS IN INTERPRETING Star Grieser | RID CEO MA, CDI, ICE-CCP Did you know that “Chief Executive Officer” is referred to as many different things and - insults and expletives aside - “Chief Ethics Officer” is one of them. “As the highest-ranking executive, the CEO sets the tone for the organization. By directly overseeing the ethical framework, they can foster a culture of integrity and accountability throughout the association.” Sure enough, the topic of ethics comes up in conversation daily, if not more often, whether it pertains to issues in front of the board, things our headquarters staff are confronting, conversations among our members, or inquiries from the consumers our members serve, or any stakeholder in our profession, and when it does, people will stop and turn to RID, to me. No pressure. While I always aim to hold myself to the highest ethical standards possible, I also - to paraphrase my new friend and esteemed colleague, Dr. Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Ph.D., philosophy professor and bioethics professor at Gallaudet University - “I don’t have all the answers but I do know to ask a lot of questions, and most importantly, ask the right questions.” In the past few months, I’ve been involved in ongoing conversations with the Deaf Advisory Group for SAFE-AI - Stakeholders Advocating for Fair and Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence in Interpreting. We recently held a symposium at Brown University where many developers, researchers, interpreters, stakeholders came together to discuss the potential of artificial intelligence in interpreting - whether that is automated or augmented interpreting, as what’s disrupting the spoken language interpreting industry, or other applications of AI that would assist interpreters in their work - e.g. use of generative predictive text to summarize a con6
sumer’s case when soliciting an interpreter for an assignment. That, by itself, raises so many ethical issues surrounding privacy and protection. Nonetheless, ethics came to the forefront for many, many concerns: if mistakes are made by AI, who is responsible? If harm is caused by misapplication of the AI, who is accountable? If “informed consent” or if the option to forgo AI for a “live” interpreter, is denied to consumers, then who is liable? We already see these issues with the use of Video Remote Interpreting in health care and mental health settings, and continue to confront these issues. These issues will not go away and the ethical quandaries will not become more clear without serious ongoing dialogue directly confronting these issues. I urge all readers to read the SAFE-AI’s “Interpreting SAFE AI Task Force Guidance (Ethical Principles) AI and Interpreting Services” and join the Advisory Group or Task Force and join the conversation. On this note, I recently gave a talk at 2axend’s Deaf in Health Care Summit where I discussed RID’s vision and mission for the future of our profession and engaged in conversations about what RID does, what challenges our interpreters working in health care settings face, and what RID could do better to support our members. I shared that in the past ten years, out of 917 documented Ethical Practice System reports or grievances made, only 85 were related to medical or health care settings - a mere 9% of all complaints. As interpreting in health care settings is one of the largest sectors for ASL interpreters and one of the chief complaints that deaf consumers have regarding lack of or poor quality communications access, this number tells me that the issues are systemic rather than