What is Ethical Technology?

Ethical Technology is a new field of enquiry that seeks to develop an approach to technological innovation grounded in humanistic principles in values. It foregrounds tech ideation, practices, cultures, and products that are equitable in both process and outcome.

Increasing concerns about unintended consequences of technology demand a vision for a new kind of technologist. Exclusionary developments in the tech sphere, including sexism, racism, classicism, and geographical bias; vast imbalances in the equity of tech, including algorithmic bias and evaporating privacy; and urgent concerns about the ethics of technological production have together led to a current of alarm about the consequences of big tech’s practices and products. In the wake of this “techlash,” college campuses must start training the next generation of this workforce to think about the ethics of technology.

Major tech companies have started to understand the need to address these concerns, creating thousands of jobs in California with titles such as “ethical hacker” or “ethics officer.” These jobs will constitute one of the most important and quickly growing job fields.

Our vision is to study and define ethical technology, to identify best practices, key concepts, theories, and strategies for creating ethical and equitable technologies, and to train the next generation of technologists to succeed in this new field.

The major technological problems of the 21st century will not be technical; rather, they will be questions about how our technologies, existing and new, will adhere to and uplift human values. These problems will not be solved using the same ways of thinking and tools that created them. Nor will they be solved by one field of study or approach alone. We aim to build an interdisciplinary coalition of thinkers, critics, practitioners, technologists, and humanists to come together and work cooperatively to create a better vision for our technological future.