Sorting out AI’s challenges and complexities must not be left only to those with the loudest voices. Tech giants whose profit motives encourage the rapid development of products and who sometimes ignore ethical standards are part of our world. There are other, quieter voices that also need to be heard, those for whom ethical responsibilities loom large. Their AI applications, although less well-known, might be equally important.

Take the recent spate of lawsuits against Big Tech for using personal data inappropriately. It is simple enough, technically, to seek permission from anyone if their data is to be used, especially if it is to be monetized. And it’s possible to create privacy around data. Most chatbots neither encourage transparency nor disclose privacy practices and principles.

Then there is the question of authenticity. Do we always know what is created by AI and what is created by a human? Attribution is slippery. We must not let loud AI voices obscure the importance of authenticity.

Let’s ask ourselves how we can best learn about AI and how we want it in our lives. Let’s seek quiet, trustworthy voices immune to the seduction of the marketplace. They have much to offer.

Susan Keitel, Greenville, N.Y.

Kudos to Adam Lashinsky for asking why successful tech entrepreneurs should have a special claim to competence or wisdom in our public affairs. He answered that they do not, and he was correct.

Technology can often help achieve public goals efficiently and effectively, but it cannot say what those goals should be. Those choices lie in the realm of human values, often contested, where choices should be deeply informed by history, knowledge of institutions and distributions of power, understanding of human sensibilities and of what is required for human flourishing, considerations of fairness and social stability, and subject-matter expertise.

Some tech entrepreneurs might possess these kinds of knowledge and intuitions, but not because they are tech entrepreneurs. Many in public life also are deficient in these kinds of knowledge, but that is no reason to afford special deference to tech entrepreneurs. Aristotle is credited with writing that we should “look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.” Domains of knowledge can differ fundamentally, and we risk much if we do not recognize those differences.

Richard B. Herzog, Washington