Too Big a Word
Emanuel Moss, Jacob Metcalf,
Data & Society: Points,
Apr 30, 2020
Ethics, write Emanuel Moss and Jacob Metcalf, is too big a word to use to describe the state of affairs in the technology world. It actually encompasses four overlapping concepts: moral justice, corporate values, legal risk, and compliance. "The question of what ethics is has very different answers depending on where one sits." they write. "The ethics of technology looks very different outside the tech industry than it does on the inside, and not simply because of conflicting principles or values between techies and their critics... it is a different goal from that of moral justice, which seeks to hold tech companies accountable for their enormous leverage over how our lives are lived and our society is organized." One could say cynically that such confusion has arisen because in a corporate environment ethics has been reduced to a minimum standard of legal compliance.
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