When the Algorithm Decides: Ethical Decision-Making for Safety and Health Leaders in the Age of AI
Artificial intelligence is entering the workplace faster than regulation or professional guidance can keep up — screening job candidates, monitoring workers through wearables and sensors, flagging exposures, and recommending safety decisions. For occupational health and safety leaders, this creates a new class of decisions that carry legal, ethical, and reputational weight, often with no clear precedent to follow.
This one-hour, case-based session, presented by Mark Katchen, MS, MBA, CIH, FAIHA — Founder, Applied Ethics Advisors, LLC, gives leaders a practical, structured method for making and defending those decisions. Using a multi-lens ethical framework, participants move beyond “is it compliant?” to “is it right, and can we defend it?” — and learn to produce documented, defensible decisions under uncertainty and pressure. Scenarios are drawn directly from workplace safety and occupational health, so the method is immediately applicable.
Who Should Attend
Safety, industrial hygiene, and occupational health leaders; EHS managers; and credentialed professionals (CSPs, CIHs) responsible for decisions involving AI in the workplace.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
- Recognize the ethical decisions AI is introducing into workplace safety and occupational health — from automated hiring to worker monitoring and exposure assessment.
- Distinguish ethical decision-making from regulatory compliance, and explain why compliance alone is insufficient when AI outpaces the rules.
- Apply a structured, multi-lens ethical framework to evaluate a real AI dilemma and produce a defensible rationale.
- Take documented, defensible action under conditions of uncertainty and authority pressure.
Presenter
Mark Katchen, MS, MBA, CIH, FAIHA — Founder, Applied Ethics Advisors, LLC. Author of a Wiley book on ethical decision-making, teacher of applied ethics at UCLA, and creator of the Ethical Decision Analyzer, a web tool that operationalizes the framework presented in this session.
Irene Grace, MD, MPH
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