Ethics guidelines in technology: When commerce takes over research

• Author:
• Author name

  Quantumrun Foresight
• February 15, 2023

Insight summary

Because of the potential dangers and algorithmic bias that artificial intelligence (AI) systems may inflict on select minority groups, many federal agencies and companies increasingly require tech providers to publish ethical guidelines on how they are developing and deploying AI. However, applying these guidelines in real life is much more complex and murky.

Ethics clash context

In Silicon Valley, businesses are still exploring how best to apply ethical principles into practice, including asking the question, “how much does it cost to prioritize ethics?” On December 2, 2020, Timnit Gebru, co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, posted a tweet saying she had been fired. She was widely respected in the AI community for her bias and facial recognition research. The incident that led to her firing concerned a paper she had co-authored which Google decided did not meet their standards for publication. 

However, Gebru and others argue that the firing was motivated by public relations rather than progress. The dismissal occurred after Gebru questioned an order not to publish a study on how AI that mimics human language can harm marginalized populations. In February 2021, Gebru’s co-author, Margaret Mitchell, was also fired. 

Google stated that Mitchell broke the company’s code of conduct and security policies by moving electronic files outside the company. Mitchell did not elaborate on the grounds of her dismissal. The move sparked an avalanche of criticism, leading Google to announce changes to its diversity and research policies by February 2021. This incident is just one example of how ethics clashes divide big tech firms and their supposedly objective research departments.

Disruptive impact

According to the Harvard Business Review, the biggest challenge business owners face is finding a balance between external pressures to respond to ethical crises and the internal demands of their companies and industries. External criticisms push companies to re-evaluate their business practices. However, pressures from management, industry competition and general market expectations of how businesses should be run can sometimes create countervailing incentives that favor the status quo. Accordingly, ethical clashes will only increase as cultural norms evolve and as companies (especially influential tech firms) continue to push boundaries on the novel business practices they can implement to generate new revenues.

Another example of corporations struggling with this ethical balance is the company, Meta. To address its publicized ethical shortcomings, Facebook set up an independent oversight board in 2020, with the authority to overturn content moderation decisions, even those made by founder Mark Zuckerberg. In January 2021, the committee made its first rulings on disputed content and overturned most of the cases it saw. 

However, with billions of posts on Facebook daily and an untold number of content complaints, the oversight board operates much slower than traditional governments. Nonetheless, the board had made some valid recommendations. In 2022, the panel advised Meta Platforms to crack down on doxxing incidents published on Facebook by prohibiting users from sharing individuals’ home addresses on platforms even if they are publicly available. The board also advocated that Facebook open a communications channel to transparently explain why violations occur and how they are handled.

Implications of private sector ethics clashes

Wider implications of ethics clashes in the private sector may include: 

• More companies building independent ethics boards to oversee the implementation of ethical guidelines in their respective business practices.
• Increased criticisms from academia on how commercializing tech research has led to more questionable practices and systems.
• More public sector brain drain as tech firms headhunt talented public and university AI researchers, offering substantial salaries and benefits.
• Governments increasingly requiring all firms to publish their ethical guidelines regardless of whether they provide technology services or not.
• More outspoken researchers being fired from large companies due to conflicts of interest only to be quickly replaced.

Questions to consider

• How do you think ethics clashes will affect the kind of products and services that consumers receive?
• What can firms do to ensure transparency in their tech research?