The article is co-authored by Florian Sellmayr, Head of Technology, Southeast Asia, Thoughtworks and Aditi Agarwal, Lead Consultant, Southeast Asia, Thoughtworks.
It has been almost six years since World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab hailed the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Since then, the level of smartphone ownership has exploded by 81 per cent; cloud and artificial intelligence technologies have become the norm, and the internet of things (IoT) is paving the way for a future where all aspects of life and work are augmented by technology.
Technology has become inseparable from our lives as employees, customers and citizens. However, the more ubiquitous these technologies become, the more businesses and consumers become aware of their ethical implications. As such, it has become necessary for technologists and business leaders to actively take responsibility for the impacts and the unintended consequences of their work — amplifying the positive and diffusing the negative.
Responsibility takes many forms: there are consumer-facing issues of trust, privacy and individual autonomy. From a business perspective, there is ensuring commitment to socially and economically progressive policies, both internally, across supply chains and work undertaken. Finally, there is the environmental impact, with concerns rising over the carbon footprint of data centres, which are required to power digital-first economies.
What is also becoming clearer is that consumers’ own values and ethics are increasingly shaping their purchase decisions, especially millennials and Generation Z – 97 per cent of consumers expect brands to use technology ethically while innovating. However, following 2018’s major fallout from the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, trust, privacy and transparency have become a regular talking point with new digital developments – the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer also further revealed that the technology industry has seen the highest decline in trust since 2012.
Thus, the risks of behaving responsibly can be highly detrimental to a technology brand’s future and the overall industry’s reputation. Even worse, there can be enormous implications for wider society such as eroding trust, fostering digital inequalities, and even causing real-world harm. Often under the spotlight are AI applications. While these have the power to do much good, for example, expediting medical data and environmental testing, huge concerns abound over programming biases. As an example, with many use cases tested on white, male participants, AI technology remains open to discriminatory practices in educational, employment, financial, and healthcare contexts. These concerns are not only hitting consumers’ radars but those of world leaders and regulators.
As public officials and regulators catch up with some of technology’s deeper implications, business leaders may want to position themselves ahead now. This means moving to act in the best interest of customers and society rather than playing catch-up with ever-changing rules. There is no doubt that the advancement of digital technology will bring huge benefits to society. However, the absence of an ethical framework can perpetuate disadvantages and create a myriad of ethical issues that technologists and business leaders may soon be powerless to mitigate.
Moving forward
To avoid these serious implications, businesses should look to integrate a framework of responsible technology at all stages of the product cycle, anticipating both its use and future development. This touches on green cloud and green tech, data security and privacy, responsible AI, inclusive design and accessibility and work with values and anticipation which all extends the general ways of working with more systemic approaches. In addition, there are a plethora of tools and frameworks available for building ethics into a product that are playful, easy to use, encourage further exploration, and assist businesses in determining whether the products they are designing are ethical, as well as providing a framework to guide them throughout the process.
Technology ultimately has the power to transform lives for the better. During the COVID-19 pandemic, technology kept governments and businesses afloat while providing a critical source of connection between separated families and friends. Multiple industries have profited from innovations in cloud computing, AI and better connectivity, with many more set to reap further benefits from digital transformation. But, these are at risk of being clouded by unexpected consequences that impact society and the environment. When digital innovators push the limits of modern technology to make human lives easier, they should always support a common goal: creating technology that doesn’t just do no evil but is valuable for everyone, now and for the next revolution.
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Aditi is a software engineer and technical lead with a strong focus on devops principles and delivering value in an iterative manner, and an expert at analysing tradeoffs between quality, delivery and efficiency. In the last 7+ years, Aditi has held different positions within the team, including engineering manager, infrastructure engineer, and security consultant. She is passionate about building high performing technical teams, green software engineering and career coaching for new and mid career technical professionals. Additionally, you can find Aditi speaking at external conferences, especially those with a focus on women in technology.
