GenAI Ethics & Governance for Leaders #15

Designing a Future Where GenAI Works for Humans—Not Just Growth or Productivity

© 2025 Freddie Seba. All rights reserved.

Introduction: Beyond AI-First—Why Ethical and Human-Centered Governance Must Be Backed In Leaders’ Strategy

As headlines celebrate GenAI-fueled growth, leaders must ask: growth for whom?

Duolingo recently doubled its language offerings/products to sell using GenAI (The Verge, 2025). But within days, reports confirmed hundreds of contractors—including language experts—were quietly laid off (The Verge, 2025). Meanwhile, thought leaders like Solange Charas (Forbes, 2025) call on HR and executive teams to take a more strategic role in shaping GenAI’s impact on workforces, not just workflows.

This newsletter explores ethical GenAI deployment in this critical moment and how to build AI strategies that enhance human potential rather than displace it.

GenAI’s future is not just technical; it’s cultural, economic, and human.

AI-First vs. Ethics-First? Or Yes, And…

We’re not here to push back GenAI innovation; on the contrary, we advocate for the critical use of this tool. GenAI offers enormous opportunities despite its challenges, including:

  • Growth and scalability
  • Reduce administrative costs
  • Accelerate human creativity and productivity

However, deploying it without ethical and governance mission alignment harms trust, institutions, society, humans, and your stakeholders in the long term.

This edition draws from recent headlines and real-world decisions to examine:

  • The tradeoffs institutions face as they scale GenAI
  • Howdo these decisions affect human dignity, trust, purpose, and your institution
  • What it mean to lead with ethics and governance

Industry Snapshots: Innovation or Erosion?

Higher Education

Promise: GenAI can help faculty update curricula, scale personalized tutoring, and optimize back-end tasks.

Risk: Full-time faculty, adjuncts, part-time educators, and teaching assistants (TAs) may be displaced. Pedagogical integrity and trust could be eroded.

Response: GenAI should enhance, not replace, instructors and staff. Elevate GenAI literacy and ethics as learning outcomes.

Healthcare

Promise: GenAI and agentic AI can help automate clinical documentation and triage, easing clinician workloads and lowering burnout.

Risk: Over-reliance on AI could sideline frontline care workers, weaken trust, and reduce relational care, impacting patient satisfaction, retention, and revenues.

Response: Ensure humans remain in the loop. Use GenAI to enhance, not shortcut, clinical expertise, and human touch.

Financial Services

Promise: GenAI can enhance compliance, provide unique insights, and even personalized investment strategies.

Risk: Employees or contractors displacement, biased decision systems, and opaque outputs due to GenAI’s “back-box paradox” can erode brand trust.

Response: Prioritize explainability, traceability, disclosure, and human-centered strategies in GenAI applications.

Key Reflection: What Kind of Work and Society Are We Building?

Duolingo’s AI-first model is commendable, but it comes with human and long-term consequences:

  • Products to sell, language offerings, and cost-effectively increased
  • Human workers, contractors, and their families lost income
  • Stakeholders responded with a mix of praise and public concern

Authentic leaders must ask:

  • Are we using AI at the expense of humans?
  • Are we optimizing outputs while weakening trust, purpose, and accountability, which harm your institution?
  • What values will shape your GenAI ethics and governance deployment strategy?

Conclusion: Governance Is Strategic Leadership

We created this newsletter and the Seba GenAI Ethics & Governance Framework to support authentic leaders making hard, high-impact decisions. GenAI changes everything, but it must not change who we are.

Ethics defines your values and your organization’s standing with your stakeholders, including employees, contractors, stockholders, and society.

Governance embeds them into every GenAI decision you make.

You don’t need to choose between growth and values. Leaders can have both with authentic leadership, expertise, contextual knowledge of technology and policy, and the right ethical and governance frameworks.

The Seba GenAI Ethics & Governance Framework: 14 Building Blocks

  1. Bias & Trust: Design systems that identify and minimize systemic bias
  2. Data Privacy: Align GenAI use with HIPAA, FERPA, and beyond
  3. Traceability: Track and document GenAI decisions
  4. Upskilling vs. Deskilling: Use AI to elevate—not erode—human expertise
  5. IP & Ownership: Clarify authorship, rights, and attribution
  6. Cost vs. Humanity: Don’t trade mission for margin
  7. Human-in-the-Loop: Keep accountability with people
  8. Autonomy in Regulated Fields: Elevate oversight in health, finance, and education
  9. Explainability: Avoid black boxes—make outputs transparent and actionable
  10. Deepfakes & Authenticity: Build safeguards for credibility
  11. Optimism vs. Doom: Navigate hype with ethics
  12. Workplace Design: Protect presence, agency, and growth
  13. Safety vs. Speed: Hold GenAI labs accountable as governance lags
  14. People-Centered AI: Build with—not over—humans

About the Author

Freddie Seba is a speaker, educator, and GenAI ethics strategist who helps leaders adopt AI responsibly and humanely. He holds an MBA from Yale and a MIP from Stanford and is pursuing an Ed.D. at the University of San Francisco, focused on GenAI ethics in organizational leadership.

Recent speaking: AAC&U, AMIA, USF’s GenAI Ethics Symposium

Quoted in: The New York Times on the ethics of GenAI systems that justify cheating

More: freddieseba.com | LinkedIn

Available for keynotes, panels, executive workshops, and advisory engagements.

Transparency Statement

This newsletter integrates insights from my teaching, research, and advisory work in GenAI ethics and governance. I use tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grammarly to assist with content planning and refinement. I write and review the final content. This edition may also be published on LinkedIn and freddieseba.com.

Mentions & Gratitude

University of San Francisco

AAC&U

AMIA

Educause

Coalition for Health AI (CHAI)

Stanford HAI

References & Useful Links

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