Public sentiment has shifted greatly towards ethical business practices, and there is increasing scrutiny on technology businesses from regulators, the public, consumers and even their own employees to act on social issues . With the power that technology brings, it’s imperative that an organisation takes action to ensure not only its own profitability, but that it builds a better society, towards the common good. We are already seeing organisations hold back technology which could be used for dangerous means, highlighting the complexity of ensuring a positive societal impact.²
Organisations can begin to measure the impact they are having on people and society by asking questions such as:
► What are the potential implications of a digital technology on society in the short, medium and long-term?
► What can we do to preserve human agency and autonomy? What is the role of human judgement and intuition in a world where more decisions are automated?
► Who gets to experience the benefits of the digital solution? The employees, the supply chain, the wider community?
► How might technology bias decisions? What impact might this have at societal level?
² Mak, A. When Is Technology Too Dangerous to Release to the Public?, Slate Magazine. February 22, 2019. Accessed July 02, 2019. https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/openai-gpt2-text-generating-algorithm-ai-dangerous.html.
Technology has the potential to create new and interesting careers, and to enable people to live more fulfilling lives. However, digital technology has been changing how we work, the kinds of jobs available, and how work is valued and remunerated for decades. The transition to the new world of work is accelerating as companies undergo digital transformation, and this is raising fear. This category asks what the impact of digital technology will be on an organization’s own workforce and the wider world of work, for example:
► If work will be automated or otherwise made more efficient by using digital technology, and the result is that fewer people are needed to do that work, what will happen to the people who are displaced?
► What impact will automation have on the economic divide and economic mobility? What is the impact within a company, on a region, or across a nation?
► What is the impact of digital technology on quality of life at work? Are workers less engaged or less collaborative because of reduced human interaction? Do their jobs require lower skill levels?
► What interventions can an organization take to ensure financial sustainability amongst individuals and families, and economic sustainability in communities and economies? How do we balance financial sustainability with quality of life?
► Are there digital technologies that can eliminate the need for humans to undertake dangerous or menial work? And if so, what are our plans for the people in those jobs?
► How do we address global, national and regional digital skills gaps, and prepare future generations for new kinds of work that give them opportunities for social mobility?
Digital technologies can be used to create a more diverse and inclusive world. By connecting more people together more than ever before using digital technologies, we can expand the access to services across the globe and improve empathy through shared experiences.
To ensure this greater inclusion and accessibility, however, we must not reinforce and amplify human bias in a digital platform, or introducing new types of bias unique to the technology (for example, datasets that use unreliable, biased data, or facial recognition technology that doesn’t recognise certain kinds of people). Special care and attention must be taken towards vulnerable persons and those that are likely to be left behind by technology, and we must work to break down barriers rather than introduce new ones. Furthermore, mitigating technology’s ability to exclude is not enough – organisations must take action to actively empower marginalised groups.
This category examines diversity and inclusion issues in digital technology from several angles:
► How do diversity considerations in the market assessment of a new product/service affect product outcomes?
► How does the diversity of development teams impact product/service outcomes?
► How are inclusive datasets and diversity in testing used to validate performance and identify problems?
► What positive impact can your business have on education, training, return-to-work or other programs which may have a positive impact on workforce diversity and digital inclusion?
► If users are negatively impacted by a technology, how do organisations ensure that they are fairly compensated?
Digital services are typically fed and improved by access to data which may be personal to an individual. However, the costs of mishandling personal information can be considerable – Alphabet, the parent company of Google, was fined €50m for “lack of transparency, inadequate information and lack of valid consent regarding ads personalisation”³. Our society values privacy, so we must achieve a balance between utility and individual privacy. We must consider:
► Do we need this data? Is it critical to running our service?
► What would the personal fallout be if the data were leaked?
► Are users able to opt out of sharing particular elements of data whilst still receiving equal access to the service?
► What do organizations do with unwanted knowledge or data about their technology users when it poses an ethical dilemma?
³Gartner, Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019: Data Ethics and Privacy, 2019
Digital solutions offer the potential to provide services more quickly and effectively than ever before, and to a greater number of people. However, reducing or removing human-to-human interaction may make it more difficult for users to understand what they are agreeing to and how decisions are made. Organisations will have to address this as users demand more transparency, and lawmakers slowly catch up – Gartner predicts that by 2021, legislation will require that 100% of conversational assistant applications (‘chat bots’) identify themselves as non-human entities⁴.
Moreover, digital services often mask the ethical responsibility for a given act, and create networks of ‘distributed responsibility’.⁵ To ensure transparency over decision-making and the reversibility of outcomes that impact humans, organisations will have to address the assignment of responsibility for their digital technology. We ask:
► Are users able to understand what they’re agreeing to? Do they understand how they should use a service, what data they’re providing, how it is processed and what impact it may have?
► Is there clarity in the ways their engagement with the service impacts the product they receive?
► Do they understand how decisions/ outcomes are reached? Who is responsible for these decisions and can they be reversed?
⁴Gartner, Predicts 2019: Digital Ethics, Policy and Governance Are Key to Success with Artificial Intelligence, 2018. ⁵Ess, C. Digital Media Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Policy Press, 2014
Digital technology comes with new and sometimes increased threats to people, businesses and national security. Our attention to safety is heightened as technology typically reduces human touch points, where risks can be spotted and mitigated quickly. We must consider:
► Are we able to adequately monitor and protect vulnerable persons in a digital environment (e.g. children/the elderly)?
► Are users given the opportunity to understand the security risks of using a service?
► Is this technology safe to make widely available?
► Is there a human fall-back?
Digital technology has the potential to help solve some of the world’s biggest challenges, such as climate change, air and water pollution, and resource shortages. But it can have environmental costs too, in the forms of resource consumption and depletion, earth and water pollution, and its own energy and carbon footprint. As organizations become more digital, we must consider:
► What is the true environmental cost of this technology if it is widely adopted?
► What are the hidden environmental costs, such as service or disposal?
► Does this technology help or hinder the world’s fight against climate change and environmental degradation?