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Home Technology

Technology is NOT neutral

Sara Watson by Sara Watson
April 20, 2022
Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/code-projected-over-woman-3861969/

Photo by ThisIsEngineering from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/code-projected-over-woman-3861969/

I never thought I’d hear a CEO talk about “technological determinism” on the main stage, but Tim Cook uttered those very words last week at IAPP’s Global Privacy Summit held in Washington, DC.

This is how Cook opened his keynote: “But we know, too, that technology is neither inherently good nor inherently bad; it is what we make of it. It is a mirror that reflects the ambitions and intentions of the people who use it, the people who build it, and the people who regulate it.”

Cook’s statement evokes historian Melvin Kranzberg’s famous first law of technology: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” But Cook stopped short of that important last turn.

As I’ve been interviewing folks in the emerging responsible and ethical technology field, the question of tech’s neutrality hangs over every discussion. Companies like Thoughtworks lead with the premise that “responsible technology begins with acknowledging that technology is not inherently neutral.”

Even Instagram’s Adam Mosseri has admitted, “We’re not neutral. No platform is neutral. We all have values, and those values influence the decisions we make.”

Engineers and tech leaders talking about how technology is not neutral represents a significant shift in thinking in the industry

This framing draws on decades of scholarship that acknowledges humans’ role in shaping the development, application, and uses of technology.

For the policy and privacy professionals in Cook’s IAPP audience, this is a familiar claim — they’re tasked with regulating data’s collection and use to mitigate potential harms to consumers.

For technologists and engineers, the idea that data and algorithms embed values has been harder to swallow. Historically, those arguments are countered with claims that “data is objective” and “algorithms are just math” and “technology is just a tool.”

But in recent years, former Google engineers like Tristan Harris have advocated for humane technology based on the idea that “we shape technology, and technology shapes us.” And it’s not just in response to concerns that social media and big tech have raised.

Companies like VMware are tying digital ethics to their environmental, social, and governance efforts. They recognise that “tech can’t be neutral because it’s created by people. And people aren’t neutral. Acknowledging this is the first step in our industry getting real about what we owe a world we’re fundamentally reshaping by the day.”

Data and AI changed the conversation

With the rise of big data and artificial intelligence that followed, research and frameworks addressing the ethical use of AI have revealed just how many human inputs go into a purportedly autonomous system.

How might training data perpetuate historical systemic biases? What outcomes are your models optimizing for? Who gets to determine the conditions of fairness? What began as a wave of concern for AI’s unchecked autonomy has uncovered all the human decisions and design choices at every step of the way. That’s helped more people see how all technologies — including data itself — embed human values and assumptions and therefore shape or constrain behaviours based on those affordances.

If technology isn’t neutral, who’s responsible for its impacts?

Tim Cook rallied around this call to action: “Those of us who create technology and make the rules that govern it have a profound responsibility to the people we serve. Let us embrace that responsibility.”

That echoes positions we’ve heard repeatedly throughout our research. Industry leaders have begun articulating principles and values, standing up review boards, and appointing C-suite executives to deliberately acknowledge and account for that responsibility.

Responsible technology practices make values explicit

Whether you’re building a data strategy, an enterprise architecture, or determining what KPIs and objectives and key results to measure and optimize against, every element of technology is laden with human decisions and values.

What responsible and ethical tech efforts attempt to do is articulate those values and assumptions, make deliberate and informed decisions, and account for their impacts on every stakeholder.

Technology is not neutral

We make bold claims at Forrester. This is one that lays the foundation for an awakening that is driving tech firms and tech executives to examine their responsibilities in the design, development, deployment, and use of technologies. How is your organization approaching responsible and ethical technology practices? Reach out to me at [email protected] to contribute to this ongoing research.

First published on Forrester blog

Related:  Legacy tech, skills shortage and siloed Ops slow DX jobs
Tags: Artificial IntelligenceForrester
Sara Watson

Sara Watson

Sara Watson is principal analyst at Forrester. She guides technology executives in developing adaptive, creative, and resilient strategies to build future-fit technology. She advises firms in evaluating and communicating the opportunities and risks those emerging technologies present. She equips tech executives with the tools to communicate the value of technology to CEOs and corporate boards and address key board priorities. Her research examines how tech executives can coordinate the firm’s ethical and responsible tech efforts to build trust and ensure the resilience of tech investments as strategies, interfaces, business models, and data privacy practices evolve. Previous Work Experience Watson’s 15-year career covering emerging technology, data, and privacy bridges industry, policy, and academia. She has been a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where her work on personal data and privacy helped articulate data’s role in the digital economy. As a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, her research on the media’s coverage of technology advocated for more constructive technology criticism. Watson has previously covered emerging tech trends as an analyst at Gartner and Insider Intelligence. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Wired, and The Washington Post, and her work has been cited by NPR, The Financial Times, and The New Yorker. Education Watson holds an MS in the social science of the internet with distinction from the Oxford Internet Institute and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a joint BA in English and American literature and film studies.

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