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This article is all about Technoethics: what it is, what it impacts, and what role we play in the implementation.

Recognizing Your Bias

Before we start, let’s recognize our own bias as it relates to this topic. I believe this is something that should be done when embarking on any new task or when beginning to teach or learn any new subject. We are each just one individual with one perspective that has been learned through our own specific experience with nature and nurture. 

I have my own opinions, morals, and values that shape what I consider to be ethical, and so do you. Everyone has some sort of bias about every subject, and the first step to mitigating your biases is recognizing them. My biases will shape this article and your biases will impact how you interpret it. A lot of what will be presented today is my informed interpretation of facts, and I welcome all forms of questioning from you.

What is Technoethics?

So let’s get started… What is technoethics? 

Defined, technoethics is an interdisciplinary research area concerned with all moral and ethical aspects of a technological society.

Technoethics is not new: While I am sure some level of ethical considerations have been around since the first tool was invented, largely looking like ‘what is the best way to go about this to benefit the most people’, the term technoethics was coined in 1974 by an argentina-canadian philosopher named Mario Bunge.

It is not just a philosophical theory, but an innate responsibility. Due to the intrinsic power of managers, engineers, and technologists, we have an increased moral and social responsibility. Technoethics denotes the special responsibilities of these technologists and engineers to develop ethics as an integral part of technology, and to integrate ethics into all aspects of our work. These responsibilities cannot be met by applying traditional moral theory:

Due to its ignorance of the special problems posed by science and technology, we must adapt science and technology, tools foreign to most philosophers, to construct a new theory of morality.

The field is continuously developing. As the struggles that exist appeared long before the term was coined, with each technological advancement comes a new set of ethical considerations.

Difficulties of Implementation

Now, what are some of the difficulties in implementing technoethics? 

Put in broad terms, and partially informed through personal anecdotal evidence, technologists are hungry for fast innovation. We love cool tech, the next best thing, and actualizing hypotheses that were once not thought possible. This is contrasted by the slow pace of ethics and governance. Ethicists want to slow things down, consider all possible outcomes of new inventions, perform risk assessments, consult experts in impacted fields, ensure the public is adequately informed, implement regulation, and the list goes on. 

These things take time, and going back to the fact that large leaps in innovation are usually inconceivable before actualization, particularly to people not in their specific field, this process normally starts once the actualization has already occurred. At this point the ball is already rolling down the hill, and it is pretty damn hard to catch up until it crashes at the bottom. I would also like to note the large impact of financial motivations on this issue, but we don’t have time to get into that today. 

Use Cases

As we go through these examples I want you to think of the advancements, the speed at which they were implemented, and for some, the ethical failures which we have already witnessed throughout history. Again, my own perspective on what is considered a success or failure are informed by my biases and interpretation of the facts, so I won’t even be mentioning my opinion, and I would love for you to look into these innovations yourselves and draw your own conclusions. I am also not an expert in all of these topics but think their mention is important in a discussion such as this, and that one of the most valuable things we can do for an improvement in this field is to learn from our history. 

Medicine	vaccines, painkillers, birth control, anaesthesia, and the fields of virology and epidemiology
Genealogy	gene editing, investigative genetic genealogy, family history assessments, and prenatal diagnostic tests
Space	planetary exploration, satellites, space stations, manned space travel, and commercial space travel
Atomic Theory	particle accelerator, the field of atomic chemistry, discovery of radioactive elements, nuclear power, and nuclear weapons
Weapons	guns, automatic weapons, bioweapons, autonomous weapons, and again… nuclear weapons
Internet	changes in copyright and piracy, ecommerce, global communication, and cyber attacks

These lists are not exhaustive. 

Ethical Considerations

Now, I could talk about the ethical considerations that either were or were not made surrounding each and every one of these innovations, and how the results of these considerations were or were not acted on… but we would be here for days. The common theme among these innovations is that they do and have had ethical implications on large scales. 

Some of the ethical considerations that should be made when approaching technological innovations such as the ones mentioned are bias, privacy, fairness, and accessibility. Bias is the disproportionate weight in favour of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Privacy is the condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by others, for both the technology and those it is imposed on. Fairness is the impartial and just treatment or behaviour of individuals and groups, without favouritism or discrimination. And accessibility is the quality of being easy to obtain, use, understood or appreciated by all, for both technology and knowledge of said technology. 

After reading this article, I want you to think about the innovations mentioned and how they stack up against these ethical considerations. 

Accessibility of Compute

Now let’s dive into some topics a little closer to home. Accessibility of Compute. 

A little bit of history, though don’t quote me on exact dates as different inventions are considered to be the ‘first’ by different people. In 1941 the first computer was invented. Though I’m aware the first computers were humans running calculations, and were mostly made up of women, this was the first electronic general-purpose digital computer. In 1950 the first commercial produced computer became available. The personal computer was produced in 1971. In 1997 cloud computing was invented…  And in 2018 89% of compute instances were hosted by cloud data centres. Statistics on data centres are hard to come by… I wonder why.

Now we must ask ourselves, are ethical considerations being made throughout this development, or are we hungry for the next best thing?

Artificial Intelligence

Now onto my favourite, artificial intelligence. As everyone knows, the ethics of AI is a hot topic right now. But with the embedding of AI in many critical fields of society, such as health care, banking, communication, the military, everything… have we already pushed the ball down the hill, are we already on the frantic chase, tripping over our own feet? I hope not. Regardless, there is no time like the present. Some ethical considerations that must be made surrounding AI are:

Embedded Bias	Our world has bias, and the data collected that is used to train models represents that bias.
Legality	Who is at fault when a decision is made by AI that results in a legal issue?
Lack of Transparency	Do people know what is going on in these models, even the people who created them? Even if they do, are the end users informed?
Training Data Collection	Is the training data legally collected? Relating to privacy, copyright, and licensing.
Separation of Fields	Are the people creating the models communicating with the people using them?

And this list is expanding with each new innovation in the field. 

Impacting Technoethics

I think anyone can impact technoethics, but the magnitude of impact will be determined by your role in the field. 

Governing bodies have the potential to impose widespread regulation, both nationally and internationally. This is something we have seen in the field of nuclear physics with IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

Corporations can create an impact by imposing ethical frameworks for their companies, something we are seeing Microsoft doing now regarding AI, though I won’t comment on their motivations. 

And then us as individuals – managers, scientists, engineers, and technologists – can make an impact by first shifting our perspective to view things through an ethical lens. Ensure that the impact of what you are building is at the forefront of your mind. Utilise frameworks that have been developed by ethicists in your respective field. Advocate for ethics within your company, and make noise when you see someone or something working against it. And I know, easier said than done.

Conclusion

Something I always think about is that until 1543, humans were certain that everything orbited around earth. We must take a step back and look at the impact our work will have on the bigger picture.