IoT and AI push tech ethics to the forefront of development
Data breaches and privacy scandals have made it vital for organizations to prioritize tech ethics and consider the effects IoT devices and AI will have on individuals and society.
The biggest challenges facing today’s technologies aren’t technological — they are human. Humans dictate adoption and abuse, determine the calculus of value and define governance.
The previous article of this series analyzed three human issues: privacy, biometric authentication and the notion of ownership. IT pros can expand their assessment of technology’s effect on society with three additional topics: tech ethics, new interfaces and the rise of anthropomorphic machines.
With revelations of fake news and mass manipulation, ever more pernicious cyberthreats and privacy breaches as well as calls for regulation, 2018 marked a new chapter. Now more than ever, the mass automation of big data, ubiquitous sensing and machines’ ability to learn call for a new business competency: a formalized and grounded approach to tech ethics. Tech ethics has entered mainstream societal discourse, and most companies are scrambling to organize — never mind reconcile risks with revenue implications. Kaleido Insights researchers found more and more companies hire C-suite ethics officers, appoint internal and external ethics advisory boards, join industry coalitions — such as Partnership on AI — or develop interdepartmental working groups. Regardless of the structure, the objective is to shift from mere risk avoidance to forward-thinking planning and counter-efforts across key areas, including design, data protection, content moderation, guidelines and processes, and training.
The most profound advancements in technology are often less about technology and more about new interfaces replacing old ones. The car offered an entirely new interface to mobility than a horse; the telephone did the same for communications; databases replaced filing cabinets. Consider how mobile has already transformed media and commerce. Businesses’ ethical preparedness around AI and other emerging tech starts upstream by cultivating ethics in the culture of the organization. IoT sensors and networking technology expand the definition of digital from just personal computers and mobile, to include objects, machines and infrastructure, and AI is digitizing the ways people interact. IT pros do not just impose data streams to objects; they transform the very interface of data collection. IT pros are just awakening to the implications of this shift. Talking to machines may well be more convenient than typing and tapping, but digitizing voice opens new considerations. A person’s voice is uniquely identifiable. Even voice data samples offer intimate health information such as fatigue, arousal, intoxication, PTSD or depression, not to mention breath data, whose chemical exhalation contains unique biomarker signatures, which can indicate specific diseases. Beyond voice, emerging interaction modalities are integrating our bodies into digital interface, analyzing our faces, our emotions, our eyes, our skin, our fingerprints, our pulses.
