This is a series of posts aimed at describing the core set of ideologies that we care most at Aire — you could say this is how we think. By sharing these publicly, we also hope that it allows you (yes, you the public) to hold us accountable to these as we evolve. These aren’t just how we talk at the company, for us these genuinely represent our thinking about our product, our research, our people, our partners and even our future existence.
Win Citizen Love
Three simple words that guide thousands of micro-decisions we have to often make about any of the facets of our company.
Aire operates in a complex environment: Regulations, Data, Privacy, Ethics, Financial Services, Media, Government, Research, AI, Public Sentiment…
And that means that traversing all these avenues & crossroads can at times lead to conflicting strategies or dilemmas. But for us the true north that guides our decision making is checking whether or not this decision can lead us to win citizen love.
In our vocabulary, citizens refers to you. The people. Even as employees of Aire, we are first and foremost citizens of society. Therefore we always want to lean towards ensuring we aren’t crossing ethical or moral boundaries that make us, as citizens, uncomfortable about Aire.
This takes many shapes for us. Let’s look at some examples where we have applied this (some of which are well documented in the public press):
Case 1: Debating which type of partners to work with:
Aire won’t supply its product or expertise to high-cost short term payday loans (yes, those loan sharks). We simply believe that this type of financial product shouldn’t exist as it doesn’t serve the consumer and creates a debt spiral. So even as technologists working breakthrough techniques, we have a moral responsibility to not allow our product & IP to be applied in this sector.
Case 2: Deciding whether or not to engage with regulators:
Some believe that when it comes to regulations, startups should just “do it anyways, and ask for forgiveness later”. We don’t subscribe to that playbook. Regulations aren’t there to create noise. For most cases they are designed to help consumers get a fair deal often because history has shown what happens otherwise. For example, you, as citizens, would expect that all baby car seats in the market meet some crash testing regulations right? So the same thinking applies to our work in the financial ecosystem.
At Aire, where possible we engage early (& often) with regulators to ensure we are aligned. In the UK we were an early member of the FCA Innovation Hub and in other markets too we have been actively seeking out dialogue.
Case 3: Evaluating data components in our algorithms:
Aire has a significant responsibility as our products are used in credit decisioning across financial institutions. So we need to really keep the right posture when it comes to evaluating whether our algorithms are carrying a bias for items such as race, religion, ethnicity or gender. We really believe we shouldn’t never use these factors in credit decisions (even if they create model improvements) and therefore we have to scrub and sanitise our algorithms for this. It’s our responsibility. Our model governance process does this, even if we are sacrificing commercial gain for it.
Looking forward
We believe there will be several more such bridges we need to cross. And we aim to decide along the lines of ensuring it wins us citizen love. And likewise, if you find us veering off that path, then as citizens, you have every right to question us at Aire. We look forward to working with you, citizens.
The Aire Squad.
