The bishop reflects on his meetings with experienced Silicon Valley representatives, including those involved in artificial intelligence and machine learning. He says he has been impressed by “their desire to maintain high ethical standards for themselves and for their industry.” Many technology industry initiatives aim to ensure that technology serves humanity, is “human-centered,” “open,” and is “ethical by design.”
“This desire to maintain ethical standards reflects both an intrinsic commitment to doing good and a realistic aversion to the risk of reputational damage and long-term commercial harm,” Tighe writes.
“What is truly remarkable is the degree of consensus that has emerged in terms of defining the ethical values that should guide research and development in technology,” he adds. Among many different organizations and companies, he has seen common values such as “inclusion, transparency, safety, fairness, privacy, and reliability” that are central both to technology innovation and to organizations’ statements of values.
He says the handbook recognizes the diversity of beliefs and values of people working in the technology sector and “appeals to the basic human ideals and values that can, and have, commanded a general acceptance.”
In Tighe’s view, the ethics handbook comes from a desire to help “highly motivated and well-intentioned executives” embed such shared principles in their company culture and their industry. It aims to identify how to ensure “a consistent and intentional focus on ethics” in companies’ decision-making and operations. It is also a work in progress and will be updated and expanded based on feedback from those who consult and use it.
The handbook provides an overarching framework for ethical thought.
It names as an “anchoring principle” the idea that our actions are “for the common good of humanity and the environment.” It outlines seven guiding principles to help apply this root principle: respect for human dignity and rights; the promotion of human well-being; investment in humanity; the promotion of justice, access, diversity, equity, and inclusion; the recognition that “Earth is for all life”; accountability; and transparency and explicability.
“Ethics is about pursuing the good and avoiding doing wrong. It is about how to live one’s own life and live together with other people in a way that ultimately benefits everyone,” the ITEC handbook says in its conclusion. “Ethics benefits organizations, it benefits businesses, it benefits people, and it benefits the environment. But again, ethics can do nothing without people embodying it in their own lives.”
While businesses can’t make an ethical society on their own, the handbook says, “neither are they free to avoid doing their part.”
Among other handbook contents is an appendix summarizing how Microsoft, IBM, and Google approach artificial intelligence ethics and principles.
The handbook is available through the website of the Institute for Technology, Ethics, and Culture.
(Story continues below)
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Kevin J. Jones is a senior staff writer with Catholic News Agency. He was a recipient of a 2014 Catholic Relief Services' Egan Journalism Fellowship.