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10 Current And Potential Ethical Crises In The Tech Industry

Forbes Technology Council

When a new technology comes with big benefits, it can be easy to overlook its potential downsides. Much of our modern work and personal lives have come to be dominated by technology. While tech innovations have enabled us to work from home, purchase every variety of merchandise, entertain ourselves, and even access remote medical care, they haven’t come without serious questions. Paired with the undeniable benefits of widespread technology use are ethical concerns about everything from privacy to human behavior to the environment.

While tech leaders are among the top proponents of adopting technological solutions to problems, they’re also highly attuned to the ethical concerns that come with them. Below, 10 industry experts from Forbes Technology Council share current and potential ethical issues that society must work together to address as innovation moves forward. 

1. Consumer Privacy

One of the biggest issues surrounding technology today is safeguarding and ensuring customer privacy. Laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act have taken a step forward in giving customers more control over their data, but companies need to do more to align their business models and product strategy to provide superior, personalized experiences on the Web without infringing on privacy. - Nicola Morini Bianzino, EY

2. AI Bias

Artificial intelligence offers incredible opportunities to automate and augment how we work, but we must be clear-sighted in the way we implement these technologies. Ethical issues around bias are very real, and we need to be upfront about discussing them. Bad data and bad algorithms will be the undoing of AI unless they’re tackled directly and early. - Geoff Webb, isolved

3. Unequal Access To Healthcare

Technology advancements and Covid-19 have changed the way we access healthcare, extending the physical and geographic boundaries of clinical capacity. However, our disjointed, siloed healthcare infrastructure makes it difficult to connect those in crisis with appropriate care. To rectify this, we need interoperable care collaboration and analytics solutions to deliver whole-person care. - Rob Cohen, Appriss Health


4. IoT Data Collection And Use

The integration of the Internet of Things with AI creates technology with both ethical and security concerns. As artificial intelligence becomes more ingrained with the IoT, our habits, preferences and behaviors will be enhanced and supported more effectively and efficiently through the integration, making this reality seamless. That invisibility may raise ethical concerns about how our data is used. - John Hocking, Killeen ISD

5. Computing’s Effect On The Environment

As we continue to evolve in our digital transformation strategies, remote work environments and so on, we increase our need for computing power to process our requests in a timely fashion. The more computing power we use, the more energy we consume, thus increasing the burden on power plants. It will be challenging to balance our convenience with the necessity for energy. - Amanda Dorenberg, COMMB

6. Mass Storage of Personally Identifiable Information

There are hundreds of companies that collect as much PII as possible about people and sell that data in plain text to anyone with enough money. There are thousands more that pay these companies and then store the information on their servers. This attracts criminals and has damaging, real-world effects on a daily basis. - Aidan McCarty, Unum ID

7. Intrusive Cybersecurity Technology

An area I’m concerned with right now is cybersecurity. While it is vital we protect ourselves from nefarious actors and online criminals, the pace of investment in cybersecurity technology is far outstripping the ethical consequences debate. Omnipresent technology designed to keep us safe may not be very different from technology deployed to keep us quiet if we are not careful. - Mark Cameron, W3.Digital

8. ‘Always-On’ Culture

Connectivity and advances in collaboration tools are creating an “always-on” culture. These advances, coupled with the pandemic and its impact on employee location, are blurring the lines between work and home more than ever before. Scheduling personal time in our calendars and making these times visible to peers is becoming an important technique to separate “work time” from “personal time.” - Murray Foxcroft, ProArch

9. Worker Displacement

With artificial intelligence and machine learning resulting in the automation of more and more tasks, the employment opportunities of the future are going to be significantly different from what we have today. Government and private organizations should come up with a comprehensive strategy to educate the current and future workforce so they have the skills to meet future job requirements. - Selva Pandian, DemandBlue

10. Algorithms Limiting Exposure To Information

Viewpoints are being manipulated due to algorithms serving up the data they’ve determined people “want” to see. I’ve seen instances of people posting an article that I hadn’t seen from a news site I visit frequently—it was hidden from me because the article’s viewpoint was different than others I’d clicked on in the past. These days we are only seeing the “facts” delivered in a manner that social media and news sites’ analytics have determined that we want to see. This is very divisive. - Laureen Knudsen, Broadcom

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