Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Be Ethical?
Status Ready to Start
Publisher NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/opinion/who-will-teach-
Link
silicon-valley-to-be-ethical.html
Score /5
Type Article
I think we can all agree that Silicon Valley needs more adult supervision right about
now.
Is the solution for its companies to hire a chief ethics officer?
While some tech companies like Google have top compliance officers and others turn to
legal teams to police themselves, no big tech companies that I know of have yet taken
this step. But a lot of them seem to be talking about it, and I’ve discussed the idea with
several chief executives recently. Why? Because slowly, then all at once, it feels like too
many digital leaders have lost their minds.
It’s probably no surprise, considering the complex problems the tech industry faces. As
one ethical quandary after another has hit its profoundly ill-prepared executives, their
once-pristine reputations have fallen like palm trees in a hurricane. These last two
weeks alone show how tech is stumbling to react to big world issues armed with only
bubble world skills:
That’s why, in a recent interview, Marc Benioff, the co-chief executive and a founder of
Salesforce, told me he was in the process of hiring a chief ethical officer to help
anticipate and address any thorny conundrums it might encounter as a business — like
the decision it had to make a few months back about whether it should stop providing
recruitment software for Customs and Border Protection because of the government’s
policy of separating immigrant families at the border.
23andMe has also toyed with the idea of hiring a chief ethics officer. In an interview I did
this week with its chief executive, Anne Wojcicki, she said the genetics company had
even interviewed candidates, but that many of them wanted to remain in academia to be
freer to ponder these issues. She acknowledged that the collection of DNA data is rife
with ethical considerations, but said, “I think it has to be our management and leaders
who have to add this to our skill set, rather than just hire one person to determine this.”
When asked about the idea of a single source of wisdom on ethics, some point out that
legal or diversity/inclusion departments are designed for that purpose and that the
ethics should really come from the top — the chief executive.
Also of concern is the possibility that a single person would not get listened to or, worse,
get steamrollered. And, if the person was bad at the job, of course, it could drag the
whole thing down.
Others are more worried that the move would be nothing but window dressing. One
consultant who focuses on ethics, but did not want to be named, told me: “We haven’t
even defined ethics, so what even is ethical use, especially for Silicon Valley companies
that are babies in this game?”
How can an industry that, unlike other business sectors, persistently promotes itself as
doing good, learn to do that in reality? Do you want to not do harm, or do you want to do
good? These are two totally different things.
And how do you put an official ethical system in place without it seeming like you’re
telling everyone how to behave? Who gets to decide those rules anyway, setting a
moral path for the industry and — considering tech companies’ enormous power — the
world.
Like I said, adult supervision. Or maybe, better still, Silicon Valley itself has to grow up.
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