Individual Responsibility in Distributed Technology Development
Individual Responsibility in Distributed Technology Development
This talk was presented to Google employees at Google Sydney's "Tech Week" conference in September, 2019
Understanding the full ethical implications of a technological system requires an omniscient view of the full inner workings of a system and its downstream social effects, which no individual possesses. This does not let anyone off the hook for the potential harms it can cause. In this talk I encouraged Google employees to reflect on the insights they have access to regarding the ethically salient features of the technology they build together, and what that morally obliges you to do. Building “ethical tech” is not a matter of pouring ethics sauce onto a product after doing the real work of developing it. Rather, I argued, it is about acknowledging that technology workers are already making value judgments all the time. Being explicit and intentional about it can make their actions better align with their goals, prevent potential catastrophes, and lead to some fun maths and computing puzzles to boot.