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When Deep Mind was acquired by Google in 2014, it was reported that a condition of the deal was that Google would invest in the creation of an ‘ethics board’.
The task of the ethic board was to ensure the technology developed would have a positive impact on society and that there would be greater awareness across society of the impact of their research.
Four years on, awareness by individuals of digital ethics issues has never been higher, but also there is a high level of apathy from users as to issues that are seen as ‘someone else's problem’, or ‘something to worry about later’.
Deep Mind does have an Ethics group, but mostly one that funds third-party research, such as the recent tie-up between Google/ Deep Mind and the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) considering the impact of AI in the democratic process.
It’s unclear as to whether Alphabet sees these activities as truly pushing the boundaries of thought leadership into critical issues, or whether they are simply marketing exercise.
Much as a token gesture into say, cancer research from a tobacco firm, or environmental analysis from an oil & gas company.
Organisations whose products are harmful to people and to the planet have had a difficult relationship with ethics over the years. One could imagine the heated discussions in a tobacco firm’s headquarters in the 1950s.
Conflicted between the need to do the right thing, and their duty to shareholders – as an industry they muddied the arguments long enough to create at least an extra generation of smokers in the West.
The same pattern is apparent with the relationship between environmentalists and the energy sector. A blind eye turned to pollution and the health effects on the populace, in the interest of profit.
The tobacco and energy industries lost the opportunity to clean up their act and instead waited for regulation to clip their wings and force them to adapt.
With digital technology and its potential impact on the world, we might not have the luxury of allowing them to wait so long before changing their ways.
Digital Ethics is an issue that concerns each of us every day.
How technology is designed, whose purposes it is designed to serve, and (particularly in cases of autonomous technology) how it can be controlled – are all issues that touch us every day.
Let’s think about Facebook, who measure their success in any given timeframe by the number of users they have, and the time they spend using.
What other industry uses these two factors to measure their KPIs?
The attention economy in Menlo Park is as corrosive to society as crack dealers on the streets of San Francisco – yet one of these we gladly give their products to children, and the other we actively shield our kids from.
The problems aren’t just limited to technology companies.
Any company that is in the business of delivering technology solutions needs to consider how it is having an impact on individuals and society.
That’s why I call for every company to create ‘Digital Ethics Councils’ which are advisory boards reporting to the C-Suite containing a mixture of internal and external specialists to consider the issues at stake.
We are too early on this journey to prescribe the format of such ethics boards, but there are a few things we surely know must be true if they are to be truly effective.
Firstly, they must be truly independent of operational management.
Secondly, they need to be given the freedom to transparently discuss and publish the topics and conclusions of their debate.
Thirdly, they absolutely must comprise a mixture of internal practitioners and external specialists.
Fourthly, they must not be comprised of technocrats – but a diversity of individuals from both technical and philosophical backgrouds as well as representing the various stakeholders of that organisation; employees, shareholders, customers and the community in which they operate.
This list can go on, as I say, we are too early for me to prescribe a ‘best practice’, only a course-heading to aim for.
In time, I can imagine how consumers might choose products whose development have been guided by ethical principles, and from companies who have transparently published their views on where the balances might lie.
I believe good firms, built to last, will see such Digital Ethics Councils as being an essential differentiator rather than a nice to have.
