Technology ethicist: the field is too easily co-opted by corporate ‘ethics-washing’

The field of technology ethics is not fit for purpose, argues an applied mathematician and specialist in algorithmic fairness in a special issue of the Journal of Social Computing devoted to technology ethics in action.

His essay first appeared online in September 2021, and then published in the journal’s print version  on Jan. 19, 2022.

While there has been an explosion of interest in and funding dedicated to the subject in the wake of a series of scandals and society-wide recognition of emerging and potential problems, the author, a professor of algorithmic governance, argues that technology ethics remains vague and toothless, has a myopic focus on individual engineers instead of the broader socio-economic systems that govern their work, and is subsumed into corporate incentives.

As a result, the field is unwittingly permitting technology companies to label themselves as “ethical” without substantially altering their practices.

The spread of disinformation during the 2016 US general election and British referendum on exit from the European Union as well as revelations that Google was working with the US Department of Defense to develop software that analyzes drone footage and that Microsoft had invested an Israeli facial recognition company that supports military surveillance of Palestinians in the West Bank prompted a recognition in many parts of society that an ethical lens needed to be applied to a sector of the economy that had put until then been largely celebrated as a provider of tools enhancing communication and computation.

The realization that machine learning used in such efforts as predictive policing, facial recognition and real estate applications were replicating racial, class and gender biases in society, and broader concerns about potential existential threats from artificial intelligence have likewise driven a rapid growth in the establishment of centers and institutes for technology ethics at prestigious universities, myriad conferences on the topic, and the creation of ethics oversight bodies and statements of ethical principles at tech companies.

“While much of this is to be welcomed, the principles espoused by tech ethics statements are often too abstract and toothless to reliably spur ethical behavior in practice,” said Ben Green, the author of the essay. “Unlike the Hypocratic Oath of doctors or the research ethics boards at universities, ethics codes in computing and information science are notably lacking in explicit commitments to normative principles.”

In addition, by emphasizing the design decisions of individual engineers or centering debates about how to build better technology rather than whether or in what form to build technology, tech ethics overlooks the structural forces that shape technology’s harmful social impacts. A designer or programmer’s actions in service of what their employer has tasked them with are scrutinized but not the morality of the employer’s motives.

As a result, there is a great danger of what Green calls ‘ethics washing’, or ethical white-washing. Companies are eager to avoid any backlash, yet often do not want to jeopardize their business plans, he says. “When ethical ideals are at odds with a company’s bottom line, they are met with resistance.”

Green gives the example of Google’s firings of the heads of its Ethical AI team after objecting to a paper they had written and attempting to force the authors to retract the paper.

He feels that the field needs to liberate itself from such constraints and embrace what he calls a “sociotechnical lens”. This emphasizes that technologies cannot be analyzed in isolation. They are not neutral but embed the biases and beliefs of the social relations that surround their production. Thus, it is necessary for the field of technology ethics to focus instead on technology’s social impacts and on how artifacts shape and are shaped by society.

Green recognizes that a sociotechnical lens on tech ethics will not provide clear answers for how to improve digital technologies but attempts to promote more equitable technology must at least begin to consider the full context in which tech ethics is embedded.

###

About Journal of Social Computing

Journal of Social Computing (JSC) is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal which aims to publish high-quality, original research that pushes the boundaries of thinking, findings, and designs at the dynamic interface of social interaction and computation. This will include research in （1）computational social science—the use of computation to learn from the explosion of social data becoming available today; (2) complex social systems or the analysis of how dynamic, evolving social collectives constitute emergent computers to solve their own problems; and (3) human computer interaction whereby machines and persons recursively combine to generate unique knowledge and collective intelligence, or the intersection of these areas. The editorial board welcomes research from fields ranging across the social sciences, computer and information sciences, physics and ecology, communications and linguistics, and, indeed, any field or approach that can challenge and advance our understanding of the interface and integration of computation and social life. We seek to take risks, avoid boredom and court failure on the path to transformative new paradigms, insights, and possibilities.  The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms, methodologies and applications.

About Tsinghua University Press

Established in 1980, belonging to Tsinghua University, Tsinghua University Press (TUP) is a leading comprehensive higher education and professional publisher in China. Committed to building a top-level global cultural brand, after 41 years of development, TUP has established an outstanding managerial system and enterprise structure, and delivered multimedia and multi-dimensional publications covering books, audio, video, electronic products, journals and digital publications. In addition, TUP actively carries out its strategic transformation from educational publishing to content development and service for teaching & learning and was named First-class National Publisher for achieving remarkable results.