Cultural ethics, abandonment shape model entrepreneur

Stephen Young, global executive director of Caux Round Table, speaks during the fourth session of the two-day 2025 Jinju International Forum on Entrepreneurship at Centennial Memorial Hall on the campus of Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, Tuesday. Courtesy of Jinju City

JINJU, South Gyeongsang Province — Businesses worldwide are moving at a fast pace thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), but the accelerating change is not entirely rosy, as there are also downsides such as ethical issues, questions about human values and newly required roles for companies, according to experts from the United States on Tuesday.

The second day of the 2025 Jinju International Forum on Entrepreneurship examined the impact of technological advancement in a more cautious manner amid current global challenges like human alienation, unstable youth employment and widening gaps in entrepreneurship. The forum, in turn, highlighted the real meaning of innovation, interpreting it as a core driver of economic growth. It further defined creative destruction as an engine of civilizational progress.

Winslow Sargeant, chief counsel for advocacy at the U.S. Small Business Administration, said entrepreneurs must be able to control AI so that the technology does not “take over humans.” His remarks came during the first session of the day, which focused on how cultures in the East and West can jointly counteract AI’s expansion over human society.

“Amazon may have more than 30,000 job cuts due to AI. This creative destruction prompts me to ask ‘what happens to humans?’ AI can outdo us in terms of number crunching, but AI doesn’t do well with creative thinking. It doesn't do well with morality nor ethics,” he said.

Ayman El Tarabishy, president and CEO of the International Council for Small Business, moderates a session during the two-day 2025 Jinju International Forum on Entrepreneurship at Centennial Memorial Hall on the campus of Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, Tuesday. Courtesy of Jinju City

Borrowing from the dystopian setting of the 1998 film "The Matrix," where machines harness humans as fuel for their system, Sargeant warned that the future, not AI, should be a common goal to safeguard humanity for both East and West — though they differ in understanding values and principles.

“Across every industrial revolution from the first to the fourth, one thing that has been consistent is the need for power. So how are we going to power these technologies? As to entrepreneurship, you have to ask about how do you use power to make sure that we can power these machines and how do we use your creativity and your ethics to make sure that these machines or these AI don't take over us,” he said.

Stephen Young, global executive director of the Caux Round Table, emphasized the importance of moral sense as an approach to AI. He defined AI as a “challenge to humanity.”

“Part of my concern with the younger generation and our current civilization is we're not talking enough about sort of ultimate values. What drives us to be good people? And it seems to me that's where we need conversation and conviction,” he said.

He added, “All human societies, East and West, they create culture. Culture creates languages. Language allows us to think. Thinking creates our values. Values generate behaviors. Behaviors seek outcomes and behaviors become habits. I would say the solution is ethics or moral sense.”

David Sprott, dean of the Drucker School of Management in California, speaks during a session at the two-day 2025 Jinju International Forum on Entrepreneurship at Centennial Memorial Hall on the campus of Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, on Tuesday. Courtesy of Jinju City

In a more practical sense, humans can deal with AI in innovative ways in business, according to other experts. David Sprott, dean of the Drucker School of Management in California, said business innovation requires not only building new technologies but also abandoning old practices. He cited Amazon and Microsoft as strong examples.

“We celebrate Amazon for innovation like AWS, logistics, automation, but they also have been willing to walk away from a number of things like Fire Phone, local Amazon restaurants and Amazon Wallet," he said.

"Amazon moved on so quickly after they said this no longer works. Abandonment is not seen as a defeat but as part of the operating culture and rhythm of the organization. Microsoft, under Satya Nadella, abandoned the Windows iPhone, they abandoned Internet Explorer, phased out hardware projects and refocused on cloud computing, open source collaboration and AI."

He added, “Innovation is not magic. It's not reserved for the gifted. It really is about discipline, about behaviors that can be practiced, refined, and should be part of everyone's job within an organization. As for entrepreneurs, it takes courage to innovate. It also takes courage to abandon wisely.”

Jason Woodard, dean of the School of Innovation at the University of Hong Kong, said education can boost creativity in ways that AI is not capable of.

“Unfortunately, whereas AI is getting better at recombination, I worry that in the course of a human lifetime, people tend to get worse at imagination over time. We tend to beat it out of people, and I think we need to stop doing that. I hope that as we think about the role of AI in education, we think about not just using AI as a tool but also elevating and integrating our own imaginative capabilities,” he said.