Elettra Bietti
ABSTRACT
The word 'ethics' is under siege in technology policy circles. Weaponized in support of deregulation, self-regulation or handsoff governance, "ethics" is increasingly identified with technology companies' self-regulatory efforts and with shallow appearances of ethical behavior. So-called "ethics washing" by tech companies is on the rise, prompting criticism and scrutiny from scholars and the tech community at large. In parallel to the growth of ethics washing, its condemnation has led to a tendency to engage in "ethics bashing." This consists in the trivialization of ethics and moral philosophy now understood as discrete tools or pre-formed social structures such as ethics boards, self-governance schemes or stakeholder groups.
The misunderstandings underlying ethics bashing are at least threefold: (a) philosophy and "ethics" are seen as a communications strategy and as a form of instrumentalized cover-up or façade for unethical behavior, (b) philosophy is understood in opposition and as alternative to political representation and social organizing and (c) the role and importance of moral philosophy is downplayed and portrayed as mere "ivory tower" intellectualization of complex problems that need to be dealt with in practice.
This paper argues that the rhetoric of ethics and morality should not be reductively instrumentalized, either by the industry in the form of "ethics washing," or by scholars and policy-makers in the form of "ethics bashing." Grappling with the role of philosophy and ethics requires moving beyond both tendencies and seeing ethics as a mode of inquiry that facilitates the evaluation of competing tech policy strategies. In other words, we must resist narrow reductivism of moral philosophy as instrumentalized performance and renew our faith in its intrinsic moral value as a mode of knowledgeseeking and inquiry. Far from mandating a self-regulatory scheme or a given governance structure, moral philosophy in fact facilitates the questioning and reconsideration of any given practice, situating it within a complex web of legal, political and economic institutions. Moral philosophy indeed can shed new light on human practices by adding needed perspective, explaining the relationship between technology and other worthy goals, situating technology within the human, the social, the political. It has become urgent to start considering technology ethics also from within and not only from outside of ethics.
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- Examples of such scholarship are cited in a paper by Jeffrey Behrends and John Basl on the relevance and flaws of "trolleology" for answering ethical questions about how to program autonomous vehicles.Google Scholar
- This is something that philosopher Helen Nissenbaum has done very well in her book Privacy in Context (2009).Google Scholar
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- Katrina Forrester, In the Shadow of Justice (2019). In this book, Forrester discusses the Anglo-American trend in moral and political philosophy to follow Rawls on questions of political philosophy but also ethics.Google Scholar
- See e.g. Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, Contract and Domination (2007); Anna Lauren Hoffman, Where Fairness Fails: Data, Algorithms, and the Limits of Antidiscrimination Discourse, 22 Information Communication and Society 900 (2019).Google Scholar
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- A wide range of eclectic approaches to the relationship between moral philosophy and structural injustice can be found in the literature. See, e.g., Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, Contract and Domination (2007), and in particular Chapter 3, Charles Mills, The Domination Contract. Also see Stephen Lukes, Power: A Radical View (1974); Gerald A. Cohen, Why Not Socialism? (2009); Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice (2011); Gina Schouten, Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor (2019); Lucas Stanczyk's work on productive justice. On the intersection and tensions between moral and political philosophy, structural injustice and technology, see Mireille Hildebrandt, Closure: on ethics, code and law, in Mireille Hildebrandt, Law for Computer Scientists (2019); and Anna Lauren Hoffman, Where Fairness Fails: Data, Algorithms, and the Limits of Antidiscrimination Discourse, 22 Information Communication and Society 900 (2019).Google Scholar
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- Evelyn Douek, Facebook's 'Oversight Board:' Move Fast with Stable Infrastructure and Humility, 21 North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology (forthcoming, 2019).Google Scholar
- Thomas Kadri and Kate Klonick, Facebook v. Sullivan: Building Constitutional Law for Online Speech, Southern California Law Review (forthcoming, 2019).Google Scholar
- An example is Apple's philosopher in residence Joshua Cohen who does not seem to be allowed to make public appearances, or Microsoft's AI ethics oversight committee which doesn't disclose the reasons behind its decisions. See Alexis Papazolgou, Silicon Valley's Secret Philosophers Should Share Their Work, August 28, 2019, Wired, https://perma.cc/6KZR-ASJ9.Google Scholar
- Oscar Williams, How Big Tech funds the debate on AI ethics, June 6, 2019, NewStatesman, https://perma.cc/5999-57BW.Google Scholar
- Safyia Noble argues in favor of a slower approach to media which involves humans in decision-making rather than relying on machines, Safiya U. Noble, Algorithms of Oppression (2018).Google Scholar
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