Who Will Teach Silicon Valley to

Be Ethical?
Author Kara Swisher

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/opinion/who-will-
Link
teach-silicon-valley-to-be-ethical.html

Publisher NYT

Publishing/Release Oct 21, 2018

Date

Score /5

Status Ready to Start

Some think chief ethics officers could help technology

Summary
companies navigate political and social questions.

Type Article

Who Will Teach Silicon Valley to Be Ethical? 1

 Cristina Spanò

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:
As a journalist is beheaded and dismembered at the direction of Saudi Arabian
leaders (allegedly, but the killers did bring a bone saw), Silicon Valley is swimming
in oceans of money from the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund. Saudi funding
includes hundreds of millions for Magic Leap, and huge investments in hot public

Who Will Teach Silicon Valley to Be Ethical? 2

 companies like Tesla. Most significantly: Saudis have invested about $45 billion in
SoftBank’s giant Vision Fund, which has in turn doused the tech landscape — $4.4
billion to WeWork, $250 million to Slack, and $300 million to the dog-walking app
Wag. In total Uber has gotten almost $14 billion, either through direct investments
from the Public Investment Fund or through the Saudis’ funding of the Vision Fund.
A billion here, a billion there and it all adds up.

[Kara Swisher answered your questions about her column on Twitter.]

Facebook introduced a new home video device called Portal, and promised that
what could be seen as a surveillance tool would not share data for the sake of ad
targeting. Soon after, as reported by Recode, Facebook admitted that “data about
who you call and data about which apps you use on Portal can be used to target
you with ads on other Facebook-owned properties.” Oh. Um. That’s awkward.
After agreeing to pay $20 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission for
an ill-advised tweet about possible funding (from the Saudis, by the way), the
Tesla co-founder Elon Musk proceeded to troll the regulatory agency on, you got
it, Twitter. And even though the settlement called for some kind of control of his
communications, it appears that Mr. Musk will continue tweeting until someone
steals his phone.

Finally, Google took six months to make public that user data on its social
network, Google Plus, had been exposed and that profiles of up to 500,000 users
may have been compromised. While the service failed long ago, because it was
pretty much designed by antisocial people, this lack of concern for privacy was
profound.

Grappling with what to say and do about the disasters they themselves create is
only the beginning. Then there are the broader issues that the denizens of Silicon
Valley expect their employers to have a stance on: immigration, income inequality,
artificial intelligence, automation, transgender rights, climate change, privacy, data
rights and whether tech companies should be helping the government do
controversial things. It’s an ethical swamp out there.

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

Who Will Teach Silicon Valley to Be Ethical? 3

 Protection because of the government’s policy of separating immigrant families at
the border.
Amid much criticism, Mr. Benioff decided to keep the contract, but said he would
focus more on social and political issues.

At a recent company event, he elaborated: “We can have a structured

conversation not just with our own employees myopically, but by bringing in the
key advisers, supporters and pundits and philosophers and everybody necessary
to ask the question if what we are doing today is ethical and humane.”

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.

Who Will Teach Silicon Valley to Be Ethical? 4

 Like I said, adult supervision. Or maybe, better still, Silicon Valley itself has to grow
up.

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Who Will Teach Silicon Valley to Be Ethical? 5